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Weekend Reads
On the eve of the seventy-fifth the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, Russia’s ability to threaten alliance members is real and pressing. Despite taking enormous losses in Ukraine, Moscow is learning and rapidly reconstituting its military.
Can Kasapoğlu, author of Hudson’s weekly Ukraine Military Situation Report, explains the threat Russia poses—and how NATO needs to change to counter it. Read his key points below.
Key Insights
1. Though official Russian data should be viewed with skepticism, evidence suggests that the production of armaments and munitions has risen.
In one year, Russia reportedly quadrupled the production of armored platforms and more than doubled the production of artillery and rocket systems. According to Russian officials, ammunition production has seen a sixtyfold hike. Likewise, the Kremlin claims that drone production saw an 80 percent increase in 2023. Russian arms production is on a stable trajectory, and evidence suggests that Russian defense companies have transitioned their factories to 24-hour schedules, shortened testing times, and accelerated contract fulfillment. In late December 2023, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it received 1,500 main battle tanks that year, an average of 125 pieces per month—compared to losses of roughly 50 to 73 tanks per month.
2. The Kremlin increasingly relies upon Iran, North Korea, and China to field critical military capabilities.
With Western sanctions becoming more restrictive, China has become a key supplier of advanced weapons system components, such as machine tools, ball bearings, and semiconductors. Customs data shows that Beijing has supplied Moscow with over $300 million worth of dual-use items, which can be used to manufacture various weapons, each month. Iran is another critical member of the axis challenging NATO. Russia has launched Iran-supplied Shahed-baseline loitering munitions in strike packages alongside a variety of other offensive weapons, including hypersonic aeroballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. North Korea has also provided Moscow with numerous ballistic missiles and as many as 3 million artillery shells.
3. Most NATO militaries and defense industries are not designed to face the Russian military in a war of attrition.
NATO has superiority over Russia in most emerging technologies, cumulative defense spending, and total manpower. Moscow, however, enjoys the upper hand in two key areas. First, the Russian military has local superiority over NATO’s forward presence in Eastern Europe. The alliance’s limited forward defense capacity and challenges with mobility and large-scale deployment, moreover, offer opportunities for the Kremlin to make gains in any offensive action. Second, Russia’s defense industry and military have adapted to years of attritional conflict and high-tempo combat operations while sustaining thousands of casualties per month. As a result, NATO is bringing new urgency to its efforts to ensure deterrence by denial against potential Russian aggression. Whether the alliance can field a fighting force at scale in a prolonged setting remains to be seen.
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
Ambassador Thomas Bagger, the state secretary of the German Foreign Ministry, joined Peter Rough to discuss what has changed in Germany’s foreign policy outlook since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
By overcoming Moscow’s influence operations in Moldova, the West can win a crucial battle in its ongoing struggle with Russia, argue Peter Rough and Luke Coffey.
Ukrainian strikes inside Russia are systematically destroying one of Moscow’s key assets: its energy infrastructure. Thomas Duesterberg explains why this matters for the Kyiv Post.
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