Vladimir Putin was able to get a personal impression of the clout of his troops in the fall. During the multi-day major exercise Sapad (West), he spent an afternoon watching Russian forces lure the attacking enemy into a cauldron and beat them back.
At the Mulino training ground, the Ministry of Defense deployed everything it had to offer, including rocket launchers, tank artillery, and the new unmanned tank uranium-9 shot out of all guns. More than 60 aircraft supported the artillery, from low-flying Su-25, ground attack aircraft, to Tupolev heavy bombers. A fleet of helicopters brought smaller military vehicles into the field, they hung in the air like toy cars. Towards the end, somewhere in the distance, two ignited Iskander-rockets.
It’s not just Russia’s military exercises that have grown in size and complexity over the years. US military expert Michael Kofman wrote in an analysis that Sapad 2021 has shown that the years of modernization have “made the Russian military a credible armed force with increased operational readiness and mobility”. Only a few months later, it also showed this outside of the training ground: the Russian Ministry of Defense moved large parts of its army near the Ukrainian border.
Putin said: “Now listen to us!”
Kofman was one of those who gave early warning of a possible escalation. “A major war in Europe is likely in the coming weeks”, he wrote in late January in an article about Putin’s possible strategy. For months, videos on the Internet have made it visible to everyone how Russian trains are transporting tanks to the west.
Nevertheless, according to Kofman, Moscow still has enough leeway for a surprise attack. Russia is assembling its forces “in a manner designed to hide its operational objectives,” he writes. The army positions its troops slowly and purposefully, the equipment can be parked in the field for months. In other words, it is unclear whether and when tanks will break out, and from where, in what strength.
What is certain is that the Russian army is clearly superior to the Ukrainian army. According to figures from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, Moscow can draw on around 900,000 soldiers and more than 2,800 main battle tanks. The Ukrainian army is only about a third of that.
It’s a force that Putin is increasingly using as a foreign policy tool, and the strength of which he likes to talk about. Unforgotten is his speech to the nation in 2018, which turned into an arms show: Putin showed animated videos of new nuclear weapons, ICBMs and those that can fly at supersonic speeds. The president portrayed it as a reaction to the West’s rearmament. “No one wanted to listen to us,” he said. “Now listen to us!”
In recent years, Russia has invested a lot of money in modernizing its army, steadily increasing its military spending to 4.2 trillion rubles in 2019, the international peace research institute Sipri in Stockholm has calculated. At that time, that was the equivalent of more than 65 billion dollars and 3.9 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product. For more than ten years, Russia has firmly ranked among the top five arms buyers in the world.
But the numbers alone are tempting to overestimate Russia’s military might. When Putin became president in 2000, the army was in a deplorable state, with many bases deserted, equipment outdated, and soldiers poorly paid. The nuclear submarine sank in the same year Kursk after an explosion on board, 118 sailors died. Putin met with relatives who Kommersant later published a speech transcript. “You know that our state and our army are in a difficult situation,” says the president. “We need a smaller army, better equipped, technically perfect.”
It was a few more years before the great reform began. The decisive factor was the 2008 war in Georgia, in which the Russian army performed anything but “technically perfect”. Soldiers used their private cell phones because the radio didn’t work. They even reportedly stole helmets from Georgian soldiers to be better protected. In the same year, the Kremlin set itself the goal of modernizing 70 percent of military equipment by 2020.
The core of the reform was not only to develop new weapons. For a large chunk of the money, Moscow has beefed up existing equipment, in part because development and production of new weapons has stalled. Sipri gives an example: by 2020, the armed forces should actually have 2,300 new ones Armata-Main battle tanks and at least 55 new ones Su-57-Get multirole fighter aircraft, weapons of a new generation. According to Sipri, however, only a few prototypes were ready by 2019 and these were not in use. Instead, the army had “upgraded” older tanks and jets, producing new types of older weapons.
The second major change concerns the personnel: Two thirds are now better paid and trained professional and temporary soldiers, only one third are conscripts. In addition, the Russian army has gained combat experience since 2008, especially with the air force and its deployment in Syria. Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said at the end of December that 92 percent of the pilots were combat-tested, and the same applied to almost two-thirds of the navy. Military observers had previously thought it unthinkable that Russian ships could shell targets in Syria from the Caspian Sea.
Shoygu recently proved once again how flexible and effective his troops can be: In January, he summarily sent paratroopers to Kazakhstan after the Kazakh ruler asked Moscow for help in fighting protests in the country. Russian soldiers were just as quick in 2020 in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region to act as peacekeepers to monitor the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
What is now happening in western Russia appears to be the most ambitious operation to date by the Russian armed forces. So far, the Russian Defense Ministry has parked tanks and other vehicles in the north, east and south of the Ukrainian border, but so far no shelters, no tents for soldiers can be seen on the satellite images. Observers like Kofman are now warning of the first signs that Moscow could soon send the necessary personnel to the border.