How Russia fights: inside the operational evolution of Moscow's Armed Forces beyond Ukraine

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is undoubtedly a profoundly transformative event in doctrinal, organizational, capability, and technological terms for all participants and observers of the hostilities. The war on the ground, in the air, and on the waters of Ukraine represents an unprecedented return to European soil of high-intensity, large-scale, and protracted conventional warfare, with the inherent consequences of progressive wear and tear on the opposing sides’ military capabilities and the massive mobilization of national war resources to prevail in the conflict. It is a battlespace in which tactical and operational elements of the past have merged with the most futuristic advances in science and technology, shaping, on the one hand, a conflict of attrition based on material warfare and, on the other, highly innovative combat. These aspects form the basis of a constant, cross-cutting process of analysing the lessons identified and the lessons learned from the feedback from experience at every level of the war, constantly confronted with the challenging distinction between fleeting theatre-specific trends and real learnings that can be abstracted from it. This ongoing effort inevitably also involves the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and Moscow’s broader military-industrial complex. The war in Ukraine is, in fact, a powerful catalyst for transformation for the Kremlin’s military apparatus, a harbinger of a highly significant contribution to its definition and configuration well beyond the current conflict, particularly in terms of how it would be employed in high-intensity conventional hostilities against a peer or near-peer competitor. Experiments of all kinds implemented by Russian forces on all fronts of the conflict have generated a significant flow of operational, tactical, and technical feedback. This has contributed to a broad-spectrum reshaping, brought about through wartime experience, from the last soldier on the battlefield to the highest levels of military-strategic and military-industrial leadership, relevant to the Russian Federation’s understanding, interpretation, and approach to its military instrument in the near future. This metamorphosis tends to transcend the borders of formal defence reform, ultimately shaping the shared culture within the apparatus, with widespread implications for training, preparation, and procurement processes. The Russian Armed Forces emerging beyond Ukraine, however, will not be exclusively the result of adjustments imposed by the vigorous, resilient, and effective opposition of Kiev’s forces, supported by military assistance from the Countries of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG), but rather the simultaneous product of at least three historical trends and three converging lines of transformation. From the first perspective, the Kremlin’s military instrument will continue to be influenced over the long term by the complex paradigms, especially doctrinal and organizational, of the Soviet era, intersecting with the partial modernizing effects introduced by the 2008 Military Reform and subsequent specific interventions to update the Russian defence apparatus. All adjustments resulting from the experience gained from the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will be based on this foundation. These latter, precisely in terms of the second aspect, will likely arise from the synthesis of bottom-up processes promoted by veterans of all ranks, top-down processes outlined by a formal review of hostilities by dedicated top-level institutional bodies, and industrial processes resulting from the restructuring of the production sector for wartime purposes, according to a war economy. The combination of these historical trends and transformative directions, combined with the effect of bureaucratic-hierarchical friction and particularistic interests, will very likely determine the configuration of the Russian Armed Forces of the future. This Focus Report aims to outline some of the possible doctrinal, organizational, capability, and technological evolutionary trajectories at the operational and tactical levels emerging from the analysis of Russian offensive and defensive activities, planned and conducted in the Ukrainian battlespace. It specifically aims to explore potential lasting transformations in terms of the organization and deployment of units and departments, as well as the use of assets, materials, and weapons systems, including in terms of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and standard operating procedures (SOPs). Despite the importance of the space and cyber domains during hostilities, the analysis focuses primarily on the traditional domains of land, air, and sea, investigating the actual or potential adaptations by the Russian Armed Forces components operating in them, namely the three branches represented by the Land Forces (SV – Sukhoputnye Voyska), the Aerospace Forces (VKS – Vozdushno-Kosmicheskiye Sily), and the Navy (VMF – Voyenno-Morskoy Flot), as well as the independent Airborne Troops (VDV – Vozdušno-Desantnye Voyska) within the confines of their conventional contribution to combat. The set of lessons learned actually acquired and implemented by these, coordinated with the parallel development of Moscow’s defence industry in specific capability segments, thus allows to depict a potential profile of how Russia fights.