Can Kasapoğlu
Part 1: Assessing the Russian Geopolitical Threat to NATO
The Russian Military Is Prepared for a Long War
Through his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear that the freedom and security of Europe depend on the West’s ability to deter and defend against Russia. Unfortunately, while Russia is taking enormous losses in Ukraine, it is learning and rapidly reconstituting its military. On the eve of the Washington summit, the Kremlin’s ability to threaten the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with military force is real and pressing.
Russia’s military policy to wear down Ukraine and the West by sustaining a prolonged war depends on a stable wartime economy footing, a resilient defense industry, and three principal warfighting capabilities: artillery, heavy armor, and manpower. Like the Soviet Red Army, Putin’s combat formations rely on mass firepower, large amounts of heavy armor, and massed troop formations with favorable force-to-terrain and force-on-force ratios. In the meantime, drone and missile strikes terrorize Ukrainian population centers.
Methodology
It is difficult to determine Russia’s real military power. Continuing old Soviet habits, official Kremlin data is often exaggerated for propaganda purposes. Still, it points at a trend. Adjusting Russia’s prewar defense industrial factory outlook to account for the country’s current 24-hour workload also offers some insight. Likewise, open-source intelligence can help track the military assistance Russia has received. For example, the number of North Korean containers carrying ammunition or imagery of the Iranian drone plant in Tatarstan can define the upper and lower bounds of Russia’s acquisitions. Another critical indicator is Russian artillery employment in Ukraine. Comparing Russian units’ artillery usage over defined periods of time can suggest when supplies are high and when they are low. Last, official bodies like the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense now offer declassified intelligence, and a number of Western think tanks, including Hudson Institute, monitor the latest open-source intelligence.
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