Стратегічна панорама (Oct 2024)
RUSSIAN STRATEGIC CULTURE: INSIGHTS FROM THE FULL-SCALE WAR AGAINST UKRAINE
Abstract
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022 marks a security policy paradigm shift akin to ‘9/11’ for Europe. For the international community of security experts, the invasion represents an anomaly for their rational choice analysis. Their ‘logic of consequence’ must be replaced by the alternative ‘logic of appropriateness’. Hence, the author of this paper employs a broad approach to strategic culture stressing Kremlin regime security as Putin’s operational code. Under this approach, interventionism characterizes the Russian ‘way of war’ as does sheer brutality. The decision to invade Ukraine resulted from Putin’s personal hubris and idiosyncrasies as much as groupthink within the Russian security elite. Putin’s calculus behind invading Ukraine is reconstructed as geopolitical and geo-economic imperialism, along with domestic concerns for pacifying Russia. The first year of war exposed a dysfunctional Russian strategic culture - a collapsing Blitzkrieg effort and a failure to prevail in the subsequent battle for Donbas. The Russian conduct of war reiterated the signature Russian strategic culture of massive destruction and unpunished war crimes. Putin often doubles down and escalates, as seen in the partial mobilization on 21st September 2022. The winter of 2022–2023 brought both systematic Russian attacks on critical Ukrainian energy infrastructure and fierce battles in Vuhledar, Soledar and Bakhmut in which Russia used meatgrinder tactics. The Russian military performance improved during the second year of the war due to the construction of massive fortifications along the frontline. Putin’s strategy has thus turned in favour of a long war of attrition seeking to outlast the combined effect of successive Western upgrading of the weapons supplied to Ukraine and the stamina of the Ukrainians themselves. The Ukrainian counteroffensive shows Ukraine to have the initiative, but progress is painfully slow. This reflects the fact that the war is a war of attrition between two different militaries supported by two dissimilar coalitions of productive power and high-tech innovative capacity.
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