Thread by @WarintheFuture

The Putin re-election campaign is now complete. What might this mean for Russian military #strategy as we shift into the northern spring and summer? 1/22 🧵🇺🇦
kyivindependent.com/western-leader…

2/ Clearly, the main effort will remain its campaign to subjugate Ukraine by degrading and destroying its tactical forces, conducting strike operations against operational, strategic and civilian targets, and its ongoing diplomatic and strategic influence operations.

3/ For several months, the Russians have been conducting tactical actions to advance in the east and south of #Ukraine. Some are opportunistic, taking advantage of Ukrainian force / arty shortfalls and terrain.

4/ Others are deliberate attempts to retake ground lost in Ukrainian offensives in 2022 and 2023. The overall effect however is a massive operational level collection effort to ascertain Ukrainian physical / EW force dispositions, strengths, as well as reserve locations & sizes.

5/ Coupled with extensive aerial and satellite recon, these offensive operations will also be developing for the Russians a broader picture of Ukraine’s current efforts to construct defensive lines across the front line.

6/ They will also correlate this with how their own defensive lines worked, and where they didn’t, in the south. In this process, they may be adapting doctrine and training to attempt more successful ‘break in’ and ‘break through’ operations for their soldiers.

7/ It is prudent to make this assumption. Russia has shown the ability to learn & adapt, even if it is slow & uneven. They will have watched the failure of Cold War NATO doctrine (and inability to coordinate higher level combined arms) in the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive.

8/ Concurrently, Russia will be building up munitions stockpiles, and continue using its glide bombs and UAV/FPV operations to support current and future ground operations.

9/ None of the current Russian operations are at the scale, or appear designed, to achieve a significant breakthrough of Ukrainian defenses. Military organisations must ‘fight for information’ in order to ‘fight with information’.

10/ The Russians probably also appreciate that 2024 represents their best opportunity to conduct another large scale offensive against Ukraine. With Ukraine’s personnel and munitions shortages, Russia probably assesses Ukraine’s defensive capacity is at a low ebb.

11/ There are some strategic enablers which Russia will need to get right before any larger ground offensive however.

12/ First, it needs to probably undertake another large scale mobilization to provide a pool of replacements. Any large offensive will inevitably result in large casualties given the Russian style of fighting. And Ukraine’s excellence at killing Russians.

13/ Second, it will need to build up munitions through indigenous production and imports from countries like North Korea. Big offensives are big consumers of munitions.

14/ Third, it will need to somehow address its problem with AFV production and supply. While it has thousands of old vehicles in storage, the more it draws on this, the older the vehicles are and harder to recondition.

15/ Fourth, it will need to address Ukraine’s integrated air, missile and drone defence network which continues to improve. The arrival of F16s will complicate Russia’s challenge in this regard. And they will need to continue to adapt to Ukrainian drone operations.

16/ Fifth, Russia must degrade Ukrainian tactical and operational collection efforts to generate uncertainty and hopefully (for Russia), surprise. It can’t do much about Euro/US surveillance satellites however and the sharing of intelligence gleaned from them.

17/ Russia’s strategic and operational deception may be vital. This was missing from the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. Surprise is harder to achieve with the modern integrated civil-military sensor nets. But it is not impossible.

18/ Sixth, the Russians may be thinking about ‘what happens if a major offensive is successful’? For example, might it prompt a greater NATO intervention? Or, might it lead to a crisis of confidence in western capitals they can exploit?

19/ An inevitable part of Russia’s approach over 2024 will be nuclear threats. It is almost instinctive for them to apply the ‘escalate to de-escalate’ method to deter greater NATO involvement. That said, Putin recently noted that NATO already has ‘boots on the ground’.

20/ Putin’s speeches and comments this year indicate he is willing to double down on his subjugation of #Ukraine. Now his ‘election’ is out of the way, he can dedicate more time and resources to that end.

21/ This thread provides assumptions and a worst case scenario on how the Russian strategy for 2024 in #Ukraine might play out.

22/ It is up to the west to ensure it provides all necessary support now to defend Ukraine in 2024 as it reconstitutes forces, and as the west rebuilds its industrial capacity to match the current production of the ‘arsenal of authoritarians’. End.