I’ve heard about the strengths that Russia has. Things like a larger population, a larger economy. Support from nations like Iran, North Korea and China. A willingness and ability to wait for the west to lose interest and sue for peace.
What are Russia’s weaknesses during this war?
Large land mass that is harder to defend
Shortage of materiel like tanks, artillery, artillery barrels
Economic collapse caused by sanctions
Lack of NCOs in the military
Officers who are appointed based on loyalty, not competence
The big thing is the lack of public support because of all the casualties and negative impact on the standard of living (inflation, higher taxes, sanctions…). The Russian government is not immune to this.
Russia’s landmass is irrelevant. They aren’t trying to defend all of it from invaders. Heck, they aren’t trying to defend any of it really.
Materiel shortages were not an issue in 2022. They are rapidly becoming one here in not-quite 2025. If the active war drags on to e.g. 2027 I expect it to take on the look of an almost-frozen conflict: troops in the field, occasional raids and artillery (or missile) barrages across the unmoving line of de facto control, and that’s about it. Plus non-stop cyber- and propaganda- warfare. Which still leaves Ukraine both largely wrecked, un-rebuildable, and totally insecure. IOW, a Russian win.
Sanctions have weakened Russia. But they are porous enough that Russia can soldier on after a fashion more or less indefinitely. “Economic collapse” is a fever dream of western commentators.
IMO their real weakness is Putin living in a fantasy world made of yes-men. Even rational leaders make bad decisions in those circumstances. The other large weakness is Putin’s mortality. And those are both weaknesses that will take a long time to affect reality on the ground and may well make matters worse from the West’s POV before they become better.
My bottom line:
The Russians are far short of invincible. They cannot win, but they also cannot be forced to lose as the (sane) West or Ukraine would define that.
If enough Western governments get insane / suborned enough, they might well give Ukraine to the Russians whether by deliberate commission or deliberate omission; most likely lots of both.
I am about as far as you can get from an expert on the Russian military, but what little reading I have done on the subject suggests that large numbers of their soldiers are badly trained and equipped, demoralized, and highly prone to desertion.
Someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
Even if I am, the Ukrainian forces are facing an existential threat that the Russians are not. That gives them a much greater incentive to fight.
What @LSLGuy said, but also a united and comitted west supplying Ukraine with defenses. Should that unity and support weaken, as you say in the OP, there will be a push for negotiation, likely ending up with Russia keeping the eastern parts of Ukraine, at the least. If the unity holds, then this thing drags on. I don’t know how long Russia can keep throwing young conscripts into the meat grinder - they did that in Afghanistan for 10 years and we see the result.
Important to note that Western powers were arming and equipping the Afghan partisans (at the time), and it was harder to project force to Afghanistan due to distance (arguably the bordering 'stans were Soviet but it still complicates force projection).
For me the big question mark is whether the conscript army is more of a net strength or a hindrance. Though there certainly must be a limit to the bodies and compliance that the Russian public can provide, it seems like the RF can keep a steady stream of non-Russian conscripts coming in from ethnically non-Russian parts of the RF. So that seems like a strength.
On the other hand, Russia/USSR has always faced the problem of managing many oppressed ethnicities, resulting in a low-trust military force. Managing the trust weakness takes extra effort and can constrain the complexity of operations. Historically Russia has managed this with massive numerical superiority in troops and particularly artillery - people don’t need to be that brave if there are multiple divisions ahead of them and behind them, with the lead elements covered by cataclysmic artillery fire, and especially with blocking units making sure they don’t retreat.
It seems likely that the Russian military will simply collapse when there’s no longer adequate mass to overcome its internal fractures, but people have been predicting that for a while and there aren’t any distinct signs of when/if that will happen. Ukraine has the motivation and cohesion advantage, but if their military mass gets exhausted before Russia’s, then it’s over, full stop. VHS defeats Betamax, again.
Their main weakness is the inability of the men on the front lines to think or act on their own. Every single order must come from someone who is nowhere near the action and has very little idea of what the situation is. That is just how their army is structured.
Russia, as all dictatorships do, has a weakness unique to it.
People seem to fall out of windows a lot in Russia. Maybe some people don’t want to fall out a window, maybe it be better if someone else fell out a window.
It seems unlikely. As I understand it, some people are very careful about accidentally falling out a window.
The average Russian does not know about people falling out of windows. Russia is very good right now at controlling the message / stifling dissent.
And Putin is very popular and he is fighting “The West” who are portrayed as very bad people.
If the number’s I’ve seen are anywhere near correct, there are about 750,000 dead Russian soldiers. Yet what/where/when are the mothers or those who do not want to be conscripted going to storm in protests? 100+ years ago it was the Winter Palace in St Petersburg/Leningrad which had a Calvary to guard it. Now it’s the Kremlin. The price of bread / butter / vodka have all gone up. Yet there will be no inside revolution.
It’s too bad Finland is now in NATO as they still really feel Karelia (the western part of Russia north of St. Petersburg) is theirs. It in fact is. Finland was doing quite well in the so-called “Winter War” to take it back in 1940 yet then Russia/Soviet Union became an ally to Britain and the US. So there’s a weakness perhaps. If Putin breaks NATO Article 5 I am all for Finland annexing their old territory and even annexing (ETA: “liberating” - the people of St. Petersburg used to be able to travel to a sort of DMZ for buying stuff in Helsinki. I wouldn’t say there’s any particular fondness for the Finns, yet if there’s any country with a chance for “let bygones be bygone” it’s Finland.) St. Petersburg, the only Russia city I’ve lived in and half a day in Moscow you know it’s (Moscow) a shithole.
Russia is weak if a standing army arrives. Who is up for that?
Seems pretty optimistic. FWIW, I have a number of Finnish colleagues, and none take the position that Finland could have held out against Russia long term.
This has been a fundamental issue with both the ill-advised decision to engage in this “special military operation” and the poor response to the problems which led to the invasion and move toward Kyiv being blunted. This was compounded by the innate corruption in the Russian military (and Russian society in general) which caused all of the maintenance and readiness issues, and the general blundering by the Russian military that lacked effective leadership or a way to effect the commands they were being given into battlefield action. All of that being said, even with sanctions, decay of the military industry, lack of competent officers and an NCO corps, et cetera, the Russians can keep throwing men (initially boys and prisoners but now middle-aged conscripts and ‘soldiers’ from client states and North Korea) into the grinder indefinitely while Ukraine is running low on service-capable men and women to staff front line and critical positions and lacking in a flow of weapons and materiel to support conventional defense and counterattack.
Long term, Russia’s crucial weakness—and not just with regard to this war but in a truly existential sense—is its catastrophic demographic collapse with births so far below replacement rates that it will not even be able to constitute as an agricultural exporter in a few decades or retain control over its remote oblasts, krais, and okrugs. Regardless of what happens with Ukraine, it is all but certain that Russia will exist as only a hollow shell of its former landmass or influence. Unfortunately, I’m not at all sure that the rest of the world will be in much better shape, either.
If Russia wasn’t otherwise pre-occupied with another war, that is of course true. I just assume the Finns saw an opportunity (circa 1940) to reclaim land they considered Finnish and they were certainly doing well fighting in snow and such.
Whether the USA or UK asked them to “quit it”, or perhaps Finland seeing how Leningrad was doing the best they could to repel the Germans who could not take that city yet had plenty of patience to siege and starve it, thought it unfair to pursue their goal, I dunno. I want to say the Finns played some part in getting supplies over Lake Ladoga into Leningrad, yet maybe I’ve already Disney-fied events enough.
Russia needed trucks and armored vehicles and they were coming in via the north to places like Archangel. It certainly would not be helpful if the Finns were still in a belligerent mode.
Hitler wanted Leningrad really badly as he knew it was the former capitol and it was symbolic; and he was mightily pissed (maybe even at the Finns too) that he could not take it.
I lived in St. Petersburg for about half a year (ETA: every year) between 2009-2015 and did not know what “krais” or “okrugs” were. Oblast is like Kaliningrad. I’d love to hear your opinion on the Suwaki Gap strategy to take part of Poland and make a land connection between Belarus (Rossiya Jr.) and Kaliningrad.
LBJ: We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
He did anyways. Now it’s clear cut: Is there oil involved? Send the boys.
If the numbers are anywhere near accurate, some 700,000+ Russian Men have perished in Putin’s War already. After WWII they had a major deficit of males to keep the population growing.
Unfortunately, my wife last week had to fly to St. Petersburg “Beacon to the West” (via Istanbul) for emergency family matters. Everything is expensive, not just bread and butter. At least flights out the same way are cheaper. I reckon because anyone who can leave that shithole of a country has done so already.
I believe you have confused “casualties” with “killed”. “Casualty” is a military term of art meaning roughly “injured, wounded, crippled, or killed.” Soldier falls off a truck & breaks a leg? That’s a casualty.
Depending on who’s numbers you want to follow, the Russians have suffered something around 700+K casualties. But not yet 200K killed. But they’re closing on it quickly.
Regardless of my quibbling, your larger point stands. That somehow the Russian public isn't all worked up about this.
Which I contend is really that those who’ve lost loved ones are all worked up inside, but understand that protesting means going to very unpleasant jail. So they keep their heads down, grumble, and hope for better times.
Meanwhile the majority of Russians are clueless about how much damage has been done to the country and the population since every bit of info that’s bad news is ruthlessly suppressed.
OTOH, the bulk of the Iranian people have wanted to get rid of the Ayatollahs for over 20 years now. Not much progress being made.
Putin won’t last forever. Neither did Khomeini nor will Khameni. But the system that produced them, and which was continued and sustained by them, can live on long after they’re gone. Because lots of other lesser lights have a lot to lose if the then-current system falls.
Yes, real revolutions happen. The Shah was in fact deposed and something very different came into being seemingly overnight. Ditto the Tsars.
But grinding continuity long, long after most folks would prefer something else is far more the norm.
Thanks, I stand corrected. Yet that does seem a high amount of casualties as well. Stalin - who like Hitler never trusted his generals and should not have been the supreme commander of any war, is often mus-attributed with the quote “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic” but that’s way too smart for what was clearly a deranged and stupid man.
I dunno why Putin waited till somewhat late in February in 2022 to try and take Kiev, when the spring thaw had begun. General Winter and frozen ground have historically been Russia’s greatest defence.
I really hope my wife can get out of Russia by January. I’ve not been a historical seethe-sayer yet all I can predict right now is a frozen-ground land-grab leading up Trump’s inauguration in January. Then he can make all the peace (do not mention Taiwan or where the 7th Navy is going to be).
A very smart man once said,
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
That may have been true at one point but one of the key differences between Stalin and Hitler is that Stalin did end up largely allowing his generals to run the war, while Hitler went in the opposite direction, losing trust in them as the war went on.
In reality, Stalin made a threat on Finland in autumn 39 (give me a large swap of your border and naval bases or else…) that the Finns didn’t fold to.
So “winter war” from nov 39 to mar 40. Although the Russian army was far more numerous, it was plagued by bad command, bad logistics and bad training. The Finns were far more equipped for winter life and fight. But finally they had to cede as their main fort line was (slowly and bloodily) pierced. Stalin made rather lenient demands, to finish rapidly.
France and UK were not on Stalin side since a)he had signed a pact with Hitler, b) he invaded Poland alongside the Wehrmacht and c) Finland was a democratic country, rather close to the West and d) an expeditionary joint force was prepared to strike Murmansk or Arkangelsk and help the Finns.
The situation change on june 41 when Hitler attacked Russia, prompting the Finns to join the axis (“Continuation war”) and retake their lands (especially Vyborg/Viipuri). They managed to siege Leningrad from the North, but had lesser progress in the Artic (even with the help of several German divisions).
As the war was turning against the Axis, Finland negociated a separate peace and Stalin did not grab more land than in 40. The Finns declared war on Germany and pursued (rather half hearthly) the German forces in Finland to Norway.
Finland was thereafter a neutral state, as a buffer between USSR and NATO.