Antulio J. Echevarria II
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has prompted wide-ranging speculations about Russia’s center of gravity and how Ukraine might attack it.[1] Some analysts rightly consider Putin himself to be Russia’s center of gravity.[2] Others argue Putin’s power comes from his control over the Russian armed forces and his tacit social pact to protect the Russian people in return for tolerating his rule; therefore, they claim these are Russia’s true centers of gravity.[3] Still others have asserted Russia’s centers of gravity are its major wartime objectives, namely, (a) capturing Ukraine’s major cities, thereby forcing its population to evacuate or become subservient, or (b) seizing the coastline along the Black Sea, which would boost Moscow’s maritime strength in its strategic competition with the West.[4] The range of these answers—encompassing individual, material, sociocultural, and geographic perspectives—underscores just how difficult it can be to discern a party’s center of gravity. This article returns to the original concept as developed by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and argues Russia’s center of gravity is, indeed, Putin.[5] The best way to attack him, moreover, is by means of a multi-faceted strategy of denial aimed at preventing him from taking Ukraine while also increasing the risks to his political survival as long as the war continues.
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