Mick Ryan
Russian advances on the ground in Ukraine this year, while limited compared to the resources expended to secure them, provide an insight into the mindset of the Russian military leadership and importantly, President Putin. This war is much less about territorial gain than it is about political gain. That should not be a surprise. But too much of the reporting on the war is reduced to square kilometres gained or lost, and numbers of drones used in Russia’s nightly, continuous aerial assaults against Ukrainian infrastructure, defence industry and civilian targets.
Throughout the course of this war, I have proposed measures of success and failure to provide more illumination about how Russia, and Ukraine, are going in this war, and to inform debate on its trajectory. These measures are also important because, if used consistently, they can also yield political and military lessons about Russia and Ukraine for western military and civilian analysts of the war.
Over the past year, Russia has built strategic momentum with its ground and aerial assaults on Ukraine. While this has been insufficient to deliver a decisive military victory for Russia, it has underpinned its diplomacy to gain limited support from the Trump administration for forcing a ceasefire on Ukraine that is advantageous to Russia. While Putin’s efforts in this regard have stalled of late, they have not been entirely wasted.
Russia retains has the strategic initiative in this war. And, over the past three years, it has learned to learn better, to adapt systemically and harness its relationships with Iran, China and North Korea to support its war effort. And, as I wrote in a just-published white paper for the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “It is very likely that Russian efforts to “learn how to learn better” in the past three years have achieved critical mass and are now paying dividends at the tactical and strategic levels.”
But what does that really mean for Russia’s prospects in the war? And what is the possibility of President Putin achieving his political and strategic objectives of subjugating Ukraine, keeping Ukraine militarily neutral and ensuring Ukraine is not able to provide a democratic model of governance visible to the repressed Russian people? To that end, this essay examines Russia’s likely measures of success for its 2025 war efforts, and assesses the degree to which it may have achieved its objectives.
Russia’s Strategic Objectives: No Change
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