Riley Bailey, Kateryna Stepanenko, Angelica Evans, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan
March 28, 2024
Ukraine is currently preventing Russian forces from making significant tactical gains along the entire frontline, but continued delays in US security assistance will likely expand the threat of Russian operational success, including in non-linear and possibly exponential ways. The continued degradation of Ukraine’s air defense umbrella provides one of the most immediate avenues through which Russian forces could generate non-linear operational impacts. Russia’s ability to conduct opportunistic but limited offensive actions along Ukraine’s international border with Russia offers Russia further opportunities to constrain Ukrainian manpower and materiel, but Western aid provisions and Ukrainian efforts to address manpower challenges would ease the impacts of such Russian efforts. Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to make sensationalized statements as part of Russia’s ongoing reflexive control campaign, which aims to deter further Western military aid provisions to Ukraine and deflect attention from the growing Russian force posturing against NATO. Putin’s March 27 statements are neither new nor surprising, and best illustrate how the Kremlin routinely overwhelms the Western information space, often with irrelevant or decontextualized truths rather than with outright misinformation or disinformation, to shape global perceptions and advance its own long-term objectives. The Russian Investigative Committee unsurprisingly claimed that it has evidence tying Ukraine to the March 22 Crocus City Hall attack amid continued Kremlin efforts to link Ukraine and the West to the terrorist attack to generate more domestic support for the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern for heightened ethnic tension in Russian society following the Crocus City Hall attacks and may be falsely blaming Ukraine and the West for the Crocus City Hall attack in order to divert domestic attention away from ethnic tensions. Ukrainian drone strikes against oil refineries in Russia are reportedly forcing Russia to import gasoline from Belarus. An independent investigation found that international information operation campaigns linked to deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin remained active, despite the Russian government shutting down media companies and organizations overtly linked to Prigozhin after his death. Senior Russian officials are intensifying their victim-blaming of Armenian leadership as Armenia continues to distance itself from security relations with Russia after the Kremlin abandoned Armenia to its fate as it lost Nagorno-Karabakh. Russian forces made confirmed advances near Donetsk City. Russia continues efforts to source ballistic missiles and other weapons from North Korea for use in Ukraine.
"Russia sucks." ---- Me, US Army (retired) 12B & 51B
Russian Admiral said, after the Moskva sank, "we have the world's worst navy but we aren't as bad as our army".
