RUSSIA: RELAPSE, REBUILD & REVENGE. WILL THE CYCLE REPEAT?

It’s going to be a totally different Russia militarily after the war ends.

Not only will the political ramifications internally be severe, the economic ones will be too. Those augur well for an inability to rebuild Russian military power inside anything short of ten years and probably twenty. Putin won’t last all that time and his successor/s will have different priorities.

I’m predicting we will potentially have another 21 year cycle of Russia rising from the bottom back to a place it thinks it’s strong enough to push everyone around again. Once again fueled by its failed ambitions and its resentment. That’s Russia, so how we stop that happening I do not know. It’s who they are.

SOVIET LEGACY

Let us examine a key factor in how this war was ever able to last so long: The Soviet Legacy.

Neither Ukraine and very much even more so Russia, would still be fighting if it had not been for the massive military excess of the Soviet Union, whose military power was vast and unsustainable in the end. Tens of thousands of war vehicles were held in huge parking lots all over Russia. Tanks nose to tail by the thousands lined up rotting in most cases, god knows how many IFV’s and personnel carriers, artillery and the like, much of it at least 35 years old and at the worst 70 or more.

Let’s be clear. The industrial might that produced that equipment is gone. The equipment is used up and will not be available again. Even if Russia committed 5% of its unsanctioned future GDP it will never be able to reproduce that depth of reserve again. It can barely feed or clothe the army it has, and it cannot really afford to maintain even a quarter of that post-war.

Russia is using up its men certainly, but it’s also used up 85-95% of whatever could be made functional from the Soviet reserves. Ukraine has or is destroying them in droves.

If there is going to be a ‘Round-2’ because we are stupid enough to stop Ukraine joining NATO, it isn’t going to be like this war. Not even slightly.

This war became this war because of what both sides had to fight it with. They then magnified new technologies like drones to transform it in many ways, and yet in others it remains remarkable in its lack of mobility and World War One characteristics.

Tactical air power has played a shockingly minimal role in this war. Russian strategic air force assets have played a surprisingly active role in delivering devastating cruise missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Arguably Ukraine has had more use for its own strike aircraft like the ex-Soviet era Su-24 Fencer’s firing Storm Shadow, than anything else. They certainly achieved some notable target takeouts.

LONG RANGE WEAPONS

Distance has been significant – as it would be in such a huge country as Ukraine and even more so in Russia.

The increasing capacity of Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory and their inability to prevent that happening, are going to be major factors in future attack and defensive actions, strategies and equipment.

A ceasefire, even a permanent peace is going to leave both sides with acute problems and advantages.

The side that sees the way forward – advanced missile and drone defences, distributed energy generation in the civil sector, electronic warfare, cyber ops, ground defences that prevent mobility, a national call up system and training for all 18-40 year olds just for starters, this is the side that can be sure there is no next war. That side must be Ukraine.

INDUSTRY & INNOVATION

A robust Ukrainian defence industry that’s not overly subsumed into the EU conglomerates would be useful too.

Innovation will be key. Leaning into AI and automation of defence systems will be tempting. Control of the air will this time, be vital. Ukraine isn’t going to make that mistake again.

Russia won’t either. But for starters it has to recover and it needs a very different military command structure and attitude.

That’s going to be hard to create. Centralised military command and a ‘do what I say without questions or suggestions’ approach to do it better? That is what they have. Initiative based and idea challenging junior officers with empowerment? That doesn’t work in an authoritarian state.

The army is part of the state control apparatus and until Russia gets out from underneath such a political system it’s unlikely to change. It’s too ingrained. Russia is never going to be a true democracy. It has no concept of what that is. It has never been one and it doesn’t know how to be. All democracy did in Russia was let Russians avoid making choices – they left that to Putin, quite deliberately.

IS RUSSIA TRAPPED IN THE REPETITION OF ITS HISTORY?

Russia has come up with some amazing technologies and innovations in its time. There are dozens of cases where western militaries have seen Russian innovations and wondered how they ever missed doing that themselves. Russians think differently, something I’ve tried to explain for years.

Russians know suffering. They almost relish it. But they don’t put up with it when it goes too far. That ‘too far’ however is a very high bar and nobody really knows where it is until its found.

Russians work and do best when they have an idealistic motivation. Stalin knew it and used it during the Great Patriotic War, as they call WW2.

The current Putin regime has none of those things to offer – and that’s what’s been its biggest failing. It’s a one man show with a tired old act. There’s no idealistic reason to get excited about. Frontline troops feel it and know it. They also know deep down this war was a mistake and carried out for all the wrong reasons. It’s never gone right since the day it began. That alone in the long term undermines any army, especially when there’s no revolution to spread or ideal to uphold, no purpose but stealing Ukrainians washing machines and conquering land that Putin and his oligarch allies want to exploit.

A future Russia is going to struggle to survive its own failings and to rebuild. We must be careful not to aid and abet its return to normality. Russia suffering through the consequences of its actions is a lesson to China that it’s not worth it for them either.

Zelensky worries Ukraine will face the same challenges in five years time if Moscow is left with what it’s stolen indefinitely. I say not five. Twenty or so. And only if we in the West let Ukraine down. It’s up to Europe, not America to make sure that happens. And it’s up to Ukraine to make sure we never forget it.

The path ahead for Ukraine if we embrace it, and it us, is positive and it can be a cultural and military bulwark against Russian expansionism.

Russia however is a basket case. Nothing the West will do can make things better, or have it change its basic course of behavior. It has to find its own way. It will for one despise again, China, whose policy of taking advantage of an ally while its down will soon find itself bitterly resented. It will certainly despise the west for having yet again gotten in its way. Only real democracy can stop this from being the case. I just do not believe Russia is mature enough or willing enough to make that possible.

Russia has so many problems, Putin’s dictatorship has exposed even more. Without the war to hide them he will not last long. It’s what replaces him that matters. No matter who or what, 21 years. By 2045/6 Russia will be a problem again. And a new generation of Ukrainians will have to deal with it.

We in the West can make it impossible for Russia to come for us and Ukraine. We learned in the Cold War that standing up to Russia can defeat it without firing a shot. Forgetting that lesson has cost us and especially Ukraine very dearly. Underestimating Russia and Putin has been a prime sin our political masters need to be taken to task over. The Biden-Sullivan weakness, their failure, magnified by the hand wringing of Olaf Shultz, has done us no favors.

We cannot stop Russia going back to the same cycle of relapse, rebuild, and revenge it is going through now. We have to be there, waiting and making in clear it will not be tolerated and we will act. With the short term politics of the West, the ever present failure to plan for the long term, that will be no mean challenge. Only saying ‘nyet’ firmly and with a conviction they will believe will keep Russia at bay. How many times do we have to relearn this lesson?

The Analyst

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Slava Ukraine!