Russia will become more dependent on unconventional military means and will more likely rely on them to achieve its goals against the backdrop of significant losses in conventional forces during the full-scale war against Ukraine.
Source: European Pravda, referring to an open part of the report by the US intelligence community about external threats
Quote: “Heavy losses to its ground troops and 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.”
American intelligence believes that it will take years to restore the Armed Forces of Russia, so it will become “even more reliant on nuclear, cyber, and space capabilities”.
Concerning the assessment of the nuclear potential of Russia, the report stresses that it is “the largest and most capable”, but “Russian nuclear material security also remains a concern, despite improvements to material protection, control, and accounting at Russia’s nuclear sites since the 1990s”.
“Throughout its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has continued to show that it views its nuclear capabilities as necessary for maintaining deterrence and achieving its goals in a potential conflict against the United States and NATO, and it sees its nuclear weapons arsenal as the ultimate guarantor of the Russian Federation,” the US intelligence believes.
Despite the exhaustion of its conventional troops in Ukraine, Russia is still capable of deploying its naval forces, long-range bomber aircraft and small general-purpose air and land forces worldwide.
Background: The American intelligence community believes that Russia currently lacks the ammunition and troops to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in 2023, so it may switch to a strategy of holding and defending its existing positions, prolonging the war.
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