Claiming that Russia’s military operation against Ukraine has not yielded the outcome that President Vladimir Putin had expected, a US report said that Russian military has and will continue to face issues of attrition, personnel shortages, and morale challenges that have left its forces vulnerable to Ukrainian counter attacks.
Putin probably miscalculated the ability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the degree to which it would have some success on the battlefield, said the report said the 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U S Intelligence Community.
The Putin’s announcement of a partial mobilization of mostly untrained and unprepared reservists will alleviate personnel shortage in the near term, but risks undermining Russian domestic support for the conflict, the report said.
Further, Moscow will become even more reliant on nuclear, cyber, and space capabilities as it deals with the extensive damage to Russia’s ground forces, said the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said.
OTHER FINDINGS
- Heavy losses to its ground forces and the large-scale expenditures of precision-guided munitions during the conflict have degraded Moscow’s ground and air-based conventional capabilities and increased its reliance on nuclear weapons.
- The war has forced Moscow to reduce its ground forces deployed in the post–Soviet states and its private security company assets operating abroad. Moscow retains the ability to deploy naval, long- range bomber, and small general purpose air and ground forces globally, and Vagner and other private security companies maintain a presence in areas such as the Central African Republic and Mali.
- Moscow continues to develop long-range nuclear-capable missile and underwater delivery systems meant to penetrate or bypass U.S. missile defences. Russia
- Russia will remain a key space competitor, but it may have difficulty achieving its long-term space goals because of the effects of additional international sanctions and export controls following its invasion of Ukraine, a myriad of domestic space-sector problems, and increasingly strained competition for program resources within Russia.
- Russia continues to train its military space elements, and field new anti satellite weapons to disrupt and degrade U.S. and allied space capabilities.
- Russia is investing in electronic warfare and directed energy weapons to counter Western on-orbit assets. These systems work by disrupting or disabling adversary C4ISR capabilities and by disrupting GPS, tactical and satellite communications, and radars. Russia also continues to develop ground-based ASAT missiles capable of destroying space targets in low Earth orbit.
