Russia - a review for 2025
This 2025 update on Russia is from a geo-political perspective to include a strategic to operational overview of their military and what’s new in terms of strategy and approach. My sources include the US DNI Annual Threat Assessment, released a couple of months ago and the DC based think tank – the Center for European Policy Analysis or CEPA’s recent paper titled “Russia’s Strategy and Military Thinking: Evolving Discourse by 2025”. Also, the US Army’s ATP 7-100.1 which was released in 2024. This content is not AI generated slop, if you disagree, you are disagreeing with me, not chat GPT – so I hope that you enjoy, thanks for watching.
Prior to the Russian revolution, Imperial Russia is most well-known for Peter the Great’s rule which lasted from 1682 – 1725, which brought about many reforms that strengthened Russia’s world position. After Peter the Great’s victory in the Great Northern War, Russia secured it’s supremacy in the Baltics and in Scandinavia, particularly Sweden. Peter the Great went on to expand Russian influence but he also modernized Russia by establishing strong trade partnerships and building a strong and professional army and navy. Many would argue that the Russian culture of conquest and supremacy began long before Peter the Great’s rule but I see this period as most profound in shaping the Russia that we see today. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union established Eastern European satellite states and implemented bold expansionist ideals which were largely seen as violations of national sovereignty. This typical Russian expansionism ideology played a large role in hastening the Cold War and established the post-world war II geo-political landscape.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has struggled to find its role in the modern world and seems to suffer from geopolitical insecurity. Russia views the US and NATO as an encroaching hegemony and not only seeks to protect its borders but also reclaim lost territory as Western powers expand their influence into Eastern Europe. Idealogues like Dmitri Medvedev advocate for escalation with Western powers, he sees NATO as an existential threat. In 2024, he worked closely with Putin to deepen the Union State Treaty with Belarus in order to convert Belarus into a military outpost that included the deployment of ballistic missiles to Belarus. It’s important to pause and understand that Russia operates in a zero sum mentality, they believe that if one enhances their security, then the security of neighboring states must be weakened, this viewpoint is dangerous and can lead to continual escalation with no off-ramps, someone must concede, unfortunately, the US and NATO seem to be trending towards a similar approach and are not likely to reduce their security posture either, Western powers default setting falls prey to NEOCON purveyors, which is the same “escalate to de-escalate”. Since the expansion of the War in Ukraine in February of 2022, Russia has built strategic partnerships with China, Iran and North Korea in an effort to build a coalition against the collective West. The international sanctions imposed on Russia have not produced their desired effects. Russia has circumvented the damaging effects of the sanctions by leveraging its relationship with the global South and by implementing illegal programs like it’s shadow fleet, which is the illegal distribution of oil to the global community. Because of illegal programs like the shadow fleet, Russia is able to continue to fund its war in Ukraine and demonstrate resilience despite the best efforts of the collective West to bring Russia to its knees. While the war in Ukraine has certainly taken a large toll on Russia’s human capital, resources and operating budget, it continues to maintain its long-range precision strike capabilities, namely with its submarines, bombers, LACMS and anti-ship cruise missiles. Russia has adapted its electronic warfare capability significantly since February of 2022, for example, it now routinely defends its ground troops from Western provided GPS guided munitions and drones. It’s defense industrial base has rebounded and seems to be keeping pace with the demand on the Eastern front despite signals earlier in the war that it was floundering. Russia is also continuing to leverage niche weapons systems, indicating that it is not going to remain idle, it continues to expand unmanned systems development and hypersonic missile capabilities, in November 2024, Russia launched an Oreshnik IRBM at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The Oreshnik launch demonstrated Russia’s capability and willingness to use a nuclear payload capable IRBM with a MIRV system. I believe that this launch was meant to demonstrate the capability to Ukraine but primarily meant for the collective West to witness. With this in mind, it seems like Russia is leaning in on it’s nuclear weapons strategy, the past couple of years have seen more assertive rhetoric in this area indicating that they are likely practicing assertive deterrence as their conventional force capability begins to slowly diminish due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. They realized the value of making nuclear threats and are using this to leverage their position as a nuclear power. A Russian professor by the name of Sergey Karaganov published a highly regarded paper in Russia titled “From Containment to Deterrence” which calls for a stronger nuclear deterrence strategy. He contends that a stronger deterrence posture would enable Russia to return to it’s fear doctrine that it employed during the soviet era. This is being demonstrated structurally as Russia’s national defense strategy has incorporated nuclear forces into its operational and even tactical level military formations. Another area of recent development is in Russia’s Arctic, Russian officials understand the importance of the high North for both economic and strategic reasons. Putin introduced an Arctic 2035 plan that ensures funding allocations and resources diverted to protecting it’s 20,000km coastline and it’s natural resources. Russia wants to be more than an arctic power, it wants dominance, it seeks to control key maritime channels and resource pathways in the high North. It is well aware of the strategic implications of climate change and increased navigability due to polar cap melting. Experts agree that the long-term outlook involves significantly increasing competition and crisis in the high North regions around Norway, Canada and Northern Alaska.
A common framework used by US military planners is PMESII-PT which is a standard set of operational environment variables that cover the Political, Military, Economic, Social, Information, Infrastructure, Physical Environment and Time aspects in order to gain a greater contextual understanding of an adversary. I’ll cover what I think are the dominant variables in 2025. Some of this may be redundant, but I think it will serve as a summary for the overarching context.
Within the Political realm, Russia seems to have doubled down on it’s foreign policy efforts. Russia is actively involved in the Middle East and now Africa. It got serious with developing a strategic relationship with China and Russia has renewed its efforts to dominate the Arctic amid increasing climate change impacts. Russia pushes for expansion of the BRICS organization and leverages this organization to legitimize itself amid its isolation from the Euro-Atlantic world. BRICS has expanded from the original five countries to eleven (11) now as of 2025.
Militarily, Russian ground forces become increasingly diminished as the War in Ukraine continues, but they continue to improve precision fires, anti-tank weapons, unmanned aerial vehicle technology and Electronic Warfare technology such as countering GPS guided munitions and spoofing. Nuclear forces are now fully integrated into its military as a fundamental part of its national defense strategy and have become part of its military strategy from the operational to even tactical employment.
Economically, Russia continues to successfully navigate the international sanctions imposed and fund the war in Ukraine through non-conventional means such as the employment of its shadow fleet. Russia similarly imposes export and trade controls on European nations it seeks to coerce. Russia expands the exploitation of natural resources like minerals and fisheries found in the Arctic and in areas previously underutilized.
Russia is certainly holistic in its approach because its social construct aligns very closely with its strategic goals. Russia provides a social narrative that contends that Western ideals are liberal and incorrectly guides their citizens towards a path of chaos and destruction. The Russian Orthodox church plays a role in the establishment of Russian moral superiority and the diaspora is called to return to their homeland which is particularly relevant in the Baltics.
Russia’s information campaign has been in full force since the start of the cold war. Russia targets its own citizens as well as aggressors in an effort to manipulate reality that favors Russia’s strategic desires. Reflexive control is a method used by Russia’s information campaign planners to influence an adversary’s decision making. By providing carefully selected information at the precise time, it can steer the adversary to make decisions that favor Russian strategic desires.
Russia’s infrastructure development efforts have shifted significant resources and assets towards supporting national defense and military operations. One such major project is aimed at constructing underground facilities to protect strategic forces and leaders around metropolitan Moscow. Other efforts are focused in and around Kaliningrad, its coast and enabling future operations in this isolated coastal region of Russia.
The physical environment presents a great challenge for Russia, with vast borders, it must be able to deploy military forces quickly in response to any incursion. This was made very apparent recently after Ukrainian forces covertly entered Russia and used drones to strike 1/3 of Russia’s strategic bombers. As previously discussed, domination in the arctic is a growing priority for Russia, it must also protect its own arctic region before climate change affects the national security aspects of the high north.
Russian planners leverage time to their benefit in many ways. Russia can deploy ground forces quickly and abruptly whereas US deployments are far more complex and involve great distances. NATO force deployments have complex authority structures in place that prevent their rapid deployment, also their decision making process is archaic and burdensome. While Russia deployments are often poorly coordinated, it does appear more often than not that time is on their side. Another way that Russia leverages time is with long protracted conflicts, it is accustomed to playing the long game, conducting a war of attrition that can be drawn out for several years if need be. This is slowly becoming more and more evident in the Ukraine war as Ukrainian ground forces are waning considerably after 3 and a half years of continuous fighting.
Russia holistically considers all of these operational variables in the ongoing campaign to provide national level support to their military. Russia does well in what analysts refer to as 6th generational warfare to leverage all aspects of society to maintain its national defense. This is what is puzzling given the recent Ukrainian incursion into Russia – with the strategic bomber drone strikes. It seems to me that Russia is so focused on power projection and the war in Ukraine that it has let its guard down in so doing, revealed a large chink in their armor. Western analysts are undoubtedly watching and studying intently as this revelation unfolds even amid peace talks.
One of the most evident manifestations of national level support to military operations are its information campaign and its psy ops campaigns. Russian leaders are very intent on dominating the information environment in both the technical intelligence preparation of the battlefield or IPB and the psychological aspects of information superiority. Russia uses IPB from competition with an adversary through direct kinetic operations which involve multiple covert measures. This can include tactical actions such as electromagnetic warfare and masking troop size and formation in order to degrade or deny and adversary’s ability to fully understand Russian capabilities and its operational environment, this is called Maskirovka, and its baked into Russian culture of deception with a smile…
More nefarious still are the malicious conventional forms which may include manipulation of the media, manipulation of public opinion, particularly its own citizens, malicious software, hacking, denial of service attacks and exploitation of communication networks.
Other examples of national level support to military operations are the Russian proxy forces such as the militant groups and Private Military Companies or PMCs that routinely report to the Russian Ministry of Defense. This is Russia’s way of projecting force while claiming plausible deniability as no official order or mandate may have been given for a particular operation.
This overview was meant to provide you with a brief summary of the modern Russian geo-political perspective for 2025.
In future segments I’ll delve into the weeds in an examination of the Russian military forces, it’s structure to include command hierarchies, geographical assignments and the evolving elements of the combat formations.
