In this digest, I examine how Russia, despite once being considered a major military power, now demonstrates significant vulnerabilities across several key capabilities and remains dependent on countries it considers adversaries. Ongoing support from China is perhaps one of the most important factors sustaining this war of aggression.
In this digest:
Key Vulnerabilities of Russia’s Air Defences (RUSI report);
Russia’s Grinding War in Ukraine (CSIS report);
Adapt or Perish: What the Kremlin Is Learning From the War in Ukraine (Foreign Affairs);
Russian Officers Establish Weapons Smuggling Channel Through Crimea;
10+ additional developments.
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Russia-China Cooperation
NATO Secretary General Rutte warned that the world could face its most dangerous scenario since World War II—a simultaneous act of aggression by Russia and China. According to him, Beijing is closely monitoring the situation around Taiwan, and in the event of military action there, it could encourage Moscow to escalate further in Europe.
The Jamestown Foundation has prepared an overview of Russia–China cooperation and the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.
Russia and China (PRC) are combining conventional warfare with electromagnetic disruption, cyber attacks, digital influence campaigns, and unmanned and autonomous systems to target U.S. partners and allies.
The PRC has recently unveiled new unmanned systems capabilities for use in a Taiwan contingency, signaling its intent to operationalize lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The PRC and Russia’s military technological modernization builds on decades of Cold War-era research, illicit procurement networks, and recent battlefield experience in Ukraine.
Both countries are exploiting procurement loopholes and legacy networks to accelerate the acquisition of military technology. Beijing continues to use middlemen and shell companies to circumvent export controls, while Moscow faces constraints from sanctions, talent shortages, and budget limitations that hinder sustained innovation and production.
Chinese military experts are incorporating lessons from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the use and importance of drones and autonomous systems, which is reshaping the PLA’s (People's Liberation Army) strategic planning and operational doctrine.
Chinese strategists emphasize the need to develop stealthier drones, robust anti-jamming capabilities (such as fiber-optic guidance), and autonomous ground logistics systems to enhance battlefield sustainability and reduce vulnerabilities in future combat scenarios.
The PRC is promoting cross-border power transmission projects, deploying its leading producers of submarine electric cables to deepen integration with other countries’ critical infrastructure. Beijing sees submarine cables as critical infrastructure that can serve as conduits not just for electrical power but also for its own geopolitical power.
Earlier in 2025, suspicious activities by the merchant vessels Shunxing-39 and Vasili Shukshin in the vicinity of Taiwan suggest a possible collaboration between Chinese and Russian merchant ships related to the reconnaissance and sabotage of undersea communications cables connecting Taiwan to the outside world.
In the Baltic and Arctic regions, Russian hybrid attacks targeting critical undersea infrastructure, particularly fiber-optic cables, have surged. Incidents in 2023 and 2024 involving Chinese vessels damaging Baltic subsea cables raise concerns over possible Russian–PRC hybrid warfare collaboration.
Additionally, the Telegraph reported that it had identified at least $10.3 billion worth of equipment China has sent to boost Russia's military industry, including machines and tools used to build Oreshnik warheads.
China's Foreign Ministry on Jan. 29 dismissed these reports.
Key Vulnerabilities of Russia’s Air Defences (RUSI report)
In the report, Disrupting Russian Air Defence Production: Reclaiming the Sky, the authors state that Russia fields some of the most capable integrated air and missile defence systems (IAMDS) in the world and produces them in high volumes. With up to 80% of NATO firepower currently being air-delivered, these systems are of disproportionate importance in shaping the conventional balance of power in Europe.
Types of Systems
Ballistic Missile Defence: early-warning radars such as 77Ya6-M Voronezh-M, 77Ya6-DM Voronezh-DM and older Daryal; and satellites for tracking missiles, including the US-KMO, US-K and Oko early-warning constellation. The primary ballistic missile defence (BMD) system is the A-135 protecting Moscow, which is managed with the Don-2N AESA radar, paired with 53T6 nuclear-armed interceptors.
Strategic SAMs: derivatives of the S-300 family. The most modern S-400. Radars: NEBO-M; 48Ya6-K1 Podlet; 96L6E; 91N6. Collectively, these radars provide the S-400 system with significant range and coverage against various threats.
Tactical SAMs (to protect critical nodes): core system - Buk-M3.
Short-Ranged Air Defence: primary systems - 9K330 Tor-M2 and 96K6 Pantsir-S2.
Vulnerabilities
Russian air defences rely on a wide range of foreign-sourced components and raw materials.
Russia’s microelectronics industry is still dependent on foreign suppliers for more complex chips. Disruption to its operations would have a serious impact on the production of some of its most critical components for air defence systems.
Even where Russia does produce its own microelectronics, it is often dependent on imports of critical materials and products, including from the US.
Among these raw materials, beryllium oxide ceramics are commonly used in high-power radiofrequency and microwave electronics for their superior ability to prevent overheating. Russia has no operating plants for the production of beryllium oxide ceramics.
The Russians also rely on Western technologies to calibrate and measure the performance of their own radars. These are important for the initial acceptance of radars into service, but also for the continuous process of improving radar performance against threats.
Russia’s air defence enterprise is also vulnerable to physical attack, largely because of its concentration of functions around some key concerns. As Ukraine’s stockpile of indigenous cruise missiles expands, the ability to reach and damage the relevant targets improves.
While the clustering of these sites enables the concentration of air defence, it also means that once the defences are saturated, all sites become vulnerable.
What Ukraine and partners can do
Prevent the modernisation of Russian microelectronics production and disrupt the purchase of critical materials used in Russia’s microelectronics industry.
Sanction companies involved in the supply of raw and processed materials to Russia, such as beryllium oxide ceramics, which are critical to the production of radar.
Use export controls to prevent the shipment of Western-made measuring equipment and calibration tools for quality control and certification of air defence systems.
Exploit software critical to the design and development of Russian air defences through cyber intrusions, to gain information to enable the compromise of air defence complexes and disrupt production processes.
Prioritise the kinetic targeting of critical nodes within air defence production that are vulnerable to deliberate attack.
Impose sanctions to disrupt the repair and recovery of Russian air defence facilities that have been damaged by Ukraine and rely on Western-supplied machine tools.
Defence Production
Russia currently has 3–4 intermediate-range ballistic missiles from the “Oreshnik” missile system in service. This was reported by the First Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
According to him, Russia plans to launch serial production of these missiles in 2026, with output of at least five units per year. He noted that the system has greater political than military significance. It is primarily a tool of intimidation aimed at European countries. The system’s combat effectiveness remains questionable.
On the night of January 8–9, Russia for the first time struck the outskirts of Lviv, just 70 km from the European Union border, with an Oreshnik ballistic missile. Read my report here.
It was the second time Russia used the Oreshnik against Ukraine—a hypersonic missile that Ukraine is currently unable to intercept. It is considered to be less destructive (if not equipped with a nuclear warhead) than other Russian missiles used against Ukraine, which is why the use of Oreshnik was widely seen as a tool for political messaging.
Additional developments:
Russia has postponed the launch of the first batch of 16 low-Earth-orbit broadband internet satellites, which was scheduled to take place by the end of 2025, by the company Bureau 1440. The constellation is intended to become a Russian analogue of Starlink and to provide “internet access at any geographic location.”
According to sources in the space industry, the delay in launching the initial 16 satellites may be due to the satellites not yet being assembled in the required number.
Russia is negotiating with India to localize the production of Russian drones, including the Lancet, in India. Analysts believe Russia likely intends to use these drones in its war against Ukraine — potentially in exchange for providing India with new Russian technologies and combat experience. Also, it was mentioned that Russia could accept an “unlimited number” of labor migrants from India under a new bilateral “labor mobility” agreement signed that day in New Delhi. Manturov said Russian industry is short 800,000 workers, while trade, construction and services need an additional 1.5 million people.
Russia and the West
Russia is building up military infrastructure near the Finnish border, likely as part of wider military expansion efforts that seek to prepare the Russian force for a potential future conflict with NATO. Finnish national broadcaster Yle published satellite images between June 2024 and October 2025 showing Russian construction at the Rybka military base in Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia (approximately 175 kilometers from the Finnish border).
Russia has increased the number of spies along its border with Norway and is also attempting to infiltrate fishing vessels that enter Norwegian ports. Due to the growing number of Russian spy cases and the overall decline in security across Scandinavia, Norway plans to double its military presence in the northern part of the country by 2032.
Several churches in Sweden have hosted fundraisers linked to the Belarusian St. Elizabeth Monastery, which is suspected of supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and of having ties to the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU. Such cases fit into a broader pattern of Russia’s attempts to influence religious organizations and public institutions in Europe, noting that the Russian Orthodox Church has sought access to Church of Sweden premises located in the vicinity of military facilities and airports.
Sanctions and Sanction Evasion
American and European microchips were found in Russia’s latest missile-like drone, Geran-5. Ukrainian intelligence has established that Geran-5 features a Chinese-made Telefly turbojet engine and a satellite navigation system receiver. The receiver contains microchips branded with the names of three American companies: Texas Instruments, CTS Corporation, and Monolithic Power Systems. Additionally, a microchip bearing the logo of the German company Infineon Technologies was identified in another part of the drone. Customs records reviewed by the Kyiv Independent indicate that Western chips are shipped to Russia by a vast network of electronic component traders, primarily registered in China and Hong Kong. A smaller portion of them are based in countries like the UAE or Kyrgyzstan.
Russia’s state atomic corporation, Rosatom, is the world’s largest exporter of reactors and enriched uranium, and a major player in the global civil nuclear industry. Despite the significance of the nuclear industry to the Russian state, Rosatom has largely escaped meaningful sanctions. The company has not faced full blocking sanctions from the U.S., EU, or U.K. — all of which continue to import Russian nuclear fuel or uranium, the Kyiv Independent reported. The limited U.S. and U.K. sanctions imposed against some Rosatom subsidiaries and personnel leave it less restricted than Russia's heavily sanctioned defense industry. As a result, the corporation has circumvented stricter sanctions against its close partner, Rostec, Moscow’s largest arms group.
Russia’s Grinding War in Ukraine (CSIS report)
The CSIS report by Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, published in January 2026, shows that Russia is paying an extraordinary price for minimal gains and is in decline as a major power.
Since February 2022, Russian forces have suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties, more losses than any major power in any war since World War II.
Russian battlefield fatalities in Ukraine are more than 17 times greater than Soviet fatalities in Afghanistan during the 1980s, 11 times greater than during Russia’s First and Second Chechen Wars in the 1990s and 2000s, respectively, and over five times greater than all Russian and Soviet wars combined since World War II.
Russian battlefield casualties and fatalities are significantly greater than Ukrainian casualties and fatalities, with a ratio of roughly 2.5:1 or 2:1.
The reasons for that: Russia’s failure to effectively conduct combined arms and joint warfare, poor tactics and training, corruption, low morale, and Ukraine’s effective defense-in-depth strategy in a war that favors the defense.
Russia’s attrition strategy has accepted the costs of high casualties in hopes of eventually wearing down Ukraine’s military and society.
After seizing the initiative in 2024, Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day in their most prominent offensives, slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century. For instance, in the Pokrovsk offensive, Russian forces advanced at an average rate of just 70 meters per day.
Russia has failed to generate rapid breakthroughs to collapse the Ukrainian front line and allow for sweeping territorial gains.
In 2025, Russian forces made marginally larger gains, seizing approximately 4,831 square kilometers (about 0.8 percent of Ukraine).
In total, Russian forces have seized around 75,000 square kilometers (approximately 12 percent of Ukraine) since the 2022 invasion and now control about 120,000 square kilometers (approximately 20 percent of Ukraine and an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania).
Russia is becoming a second- or third-rate economic power. Its economy is showing strains because of the war, though it has not buckled.
Economic growth slowed to 0.6 percent in 2025, and Russia continues to fall behind in key technologies such as AI.
Russia had a grand total of zero companies in the top 100 list of technology companies in the world as measured by market capitalization.
Russia’s space industry, which was once a global leader, has fallen to historically low levels. Roscosmos, the state corporation in charge of the Russian space program, carried out only 17 orbital launches in 2025, compared to 193 orbital launches by the United States (led by SpaceX) and 92 by China.
To help prevent a further deterioration of Russia’s economy and defense industrial base, Russia has leaned heavily on China. China-Russia trade reached nearly $250 billion in 2024, up from $190 billion in 2022.
In the defense sector, China has significantly increased exports to Russia of “high-priority items,” a set of 50 dual-use goods that include computer chips, machine tools, radars, and sensors that Russia needs to sustain its war efforts.
Chinese exports helped Russia triple its production of Iskander-M ballistic missiles from 2023 to 2024, which Russia has used to pound Ukrainian cities.
Adapt or Perish: What the Kremlin Is Learning From the War in Ukraine
Moscow is analyzing combat experience and disseminating the lessons it has learned throughout its force and defense ecosystem. It realizes that the future character of warfare is changing, so the military must change, as well. Here are some key points from an excellent article written by Dara Massicot for Foreign Affairs:
Beginning in 2022, Russia launched a systematic effort to examine its combat experience, draw lessons from it, and share those lessons across its military.
By early 2023, Moscow had quietly constructed a complex ecosystem of learning that includes the defense manufacturing base, universities, and soldiers up and down the chain of command.
Today, the military is institutionalizing its knowledge, realigning its defense manufacturers and research organizations to support wartime needs, and pairing tech startups with state resources.
The result has been new tactics on the battlefield—codified in training programs and combat manuals—and better weapons.
Russian soldiers have been sharing advice informally through social networks, closed social media channels, and self-published advice manuals. This type of informal, person-to-person or unit-to-unit learning is an important first stage of wartime adaptation. The second stage of learning includes institutionalizing those changes, such as by revising training programs, procurement plans, and operational concepts. After that, militaries must engage in predictive learning about the future of warfare and recognize the need for reforms or transformational change.
In 2022, the military ordered dedicated staff officers and researchers to frontline military command posts so they could observe the war as closely as possible and seek to understand troop performance.
In Moscow, the Russian military has over 20 commissions devoted to implementing recommendations based on information it receives from the frontlines and from Russian researchers.
At a 2023 conference hosted by Russia’s artillery academy, soldiers and experts came together to revise artillery tactics and integrate drones into artillery strikes. In just three years, Russia has made over 450 interim modifications to combat manuals. Military leaders emphasize that these handbooks are likely to be completely overhauled after the war ends.
The Ministry of Defense relaxed regulations to shorten research and development timelines. It held meetings with the defense manufacturing base to ensure it received and digested feedback from frontline units and made changes.
And starting in early 2023, the Kremlin created programs to integrate civilian universities and research centers into national defense efforts.
The Ministry of Defense set up Rubikon, the country’s elite drone research and operations unit, which experiments with different types of tactics that now inform how other UAV units are instructed.
Russia rotates troops between the battlefield and training ranges, much as it has sent defense manufacturers to the front. When in-person visits are not possible, the military sets up secure videoconferences between frontline units, academies, and training centers. Some disabled veterans have become full-time instructors.
Russia has made its simulators more realistic and has modified its instruction of tactical first aid. It has started teaching troops how to drive military vehicles through a complicated drone battlefield, as well as how to carry out a small assault within a larger drone and armored assault—both critical tasks in a war where the frontlines are under constant surveillance by Kyiv.
Russian instructors are using drones to monitor soldiers’ training so they can better evaluate and discuss the units’ successes and failures afterward.
At the same time, Russia’s training programs remain uneven.
The Russian military’s learning process has a critical flaw. The Russian military has struggled to implement the recommendations and ensure the guidance is followed.
There are areas in which Moscow is still struggling to learn at all, such as discipline and professionalism, long-neglected areas of combat power.
Given its current architecture, finances, and leadership, the Russian military appears poised for a comprehensive and intense learning period after the war in Ukraine ends.
Russian officials have stated that overcoming threats to large-scale armored assaults is a top research priority and that they are planning to alter the military’s force design and operational concepts to account for this challenge.
From now on, the Russian military will likely create more UAVs and other uncrewed systems, which will supplement Moscow’s military power relative to NATO.
Russian military experts have written that uncrewed systems will become the most important weapons of the twenty-first century. The world they envision will soon have swarms of autonomous drones that can overwhelm adversaries’ defenses, microdrones that are difficult to identify or stop, and drones that mimic birds, bugs, or other wildlife.
The Russian military has been observing the Ukrainian military’s use of combat robots and is preparing to invest more in this area to help with tasks such as sentry duty, logistics, mining and demining, and undersea surveillance.
Russian experts are considering how to field AI decision-making systems and AI-enabled weapons by the early 2030s. Although this area is a national priority, investment in AI remains relatively modest, limiting Russia’s capabilities in the near term.
Moscow also worries that the United States and Europe will study its war and develop countermeasures to Russia’s newest capabilities and tactics. NATO must prove these fears to be justified.
Russian Officers Establish Weapons Smuggling Channel Through Crimea
The Ukrainian hacktivist group 256 Cyber Assault Division, in cooperation with InformNapalm volunteer intelligence community, conducted a CYBINT operation, obtaining important intelligence for the Ukrainian Defense Forces. The public portion of this study focuses on exposing the supply chains of contraband weapons from the war zone to temporarily occupied Crimea. Read the full report here.
The Crimean peninsula functions as a logistics hub for the further transfer of weapons to black markets in regions of the Russian Federation, as well as to countries in Europe, Western Asia, and Africa. These transfers reportedly involve Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of tankers.
The investigation uncovered direct cooperation between Russian army officers and representatives of Kadyrov’s Vostok-Akhmat battalion in the illegal arms trade.
Data obtained through CYBINT operations indicate that Russian military personnel have established stable channels for smuggling weapons from frontline positions through the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts into occupied Crimea, which has emerged as the primary and relatively safe transit hub for weapons from the front lines.
The scheme relies on the duty schedules of specific Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) units at checkpoints along the R-280 highway on the Berdyansk–Melitopol–Chongar–Simferopol route.
Depending on prior arrangements, Rosgvardia personnel either allow suspicious cargo to pass without inspection (for regular and “trusted” clients) or, for a fee, deliberately ignore discrepancies between transport documents and the actual cargo.
Primary sourcing of arms begins with Russian officers commanding assault units on the front line. It is common practice for them to deliberately inflate reported losses of small arms during assaults.
At the same time, some soldiers are sent into attacks without standard-issue weapons, sometimes being told to “win their weapons in combat.” Firearms left on positions are subsequently written off as lost and diverted into illicit circulation.
Another frequent source involves weapons and ammunition found or seized in no-man’s-land along the line of contact, which are deliberately not reported. Most often, these are weapons taken from the bodies of soldiers from neighboring units.
The scale of the weapons trafficking in the Russian army is significant. Some smugglers even get caught. Thus, following tip-offs to the FSB from “concerned citizens,” a large-scale raid took place on December 12, 2025, when the FSB, police, and the Russian National Guard detained 169 individuals from 53 regions of Russia involved in illegal arms trafficking. Among the items seized were machine guns, assault rifles, grenade launchers, marksman rifles, mines, approximately 220,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as large quantities of TNT and gunpowder.
Other Developments
Russian forces are currently unable to build out a strategic reserve and will therefore likely be constrained to grinding, slow advances at their current rate and scale in 2026 — ISW. HUR said on December 3 that Russia had fulfilled its plan to recruit 403,000 people in 2025. Former HUR Chief Budanov stated that Russia can continue recruitment for a “long time” given its population and financial resources and has plans to increase its mobilization to 409,000 people in 2026.
Russian forces are using African mercenaries as “suicide attackers” to destroy Ukrainian fortifications. The published video shows an African mercenary with a TM-62 anti-tank mine attached to his load-bearing vest. A Russian serviceman refers to him as an “opener” and says that he is about to be sent to “jump through the forest.”
At least 1,436 citizens from 36 African countries are currently fighting in the ranks of the Russian army, Ukraine’s MFA informed.
Russia recruits citizens of African states using a variety of methods. Some are offered money; others are deceived and do not fully understand what they are signing up for. In other cases, recruitment occurs under coercion.According to a report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), after focusing initially on Africa, Russia is turning to Latin America as a source of labor to boost its production of drones, especially the Geran-2, which is based on the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 kamikaze drone. This campaign is part of Alabuga Start, which presents itself as an international career-development exchange program, offering airfare, housing, health insurance, and Russian-language courses to entice applicants. In reality, the program serves as a pipeline into SEZ Alabuga, 600 miles east of Moscow in the Republic of Tatarstan, where recruits reportedly work in harsh conditions assembling the Geran-2 and other drones.
Alabuga Start’s recruitment in Latin America has scaled up rapidly in both scope and sophistication. The program uses social media platforms — including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Telegram, and RuTube (a Russian video platform) — to drive this expansion, relying on promotional videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI), dedicated regional pages, and influencer partnerships. FDD has identified Alabuga Start’s primary recruiter in Latin America, along with local recruiters in Brazil, Mexico, and Bolivia. The report profiles those individuals and presents a country-by-country review of the program’s presence in 13 Latin American countries.
This is an exceptional in-depth report on Russia’s war against Ukraine, a democratic nation that deserves — but is not receiving — U.S. military assistance. 🇺🇦 I highly recommend it.
Excellent Olena, thank you for this. Particularly interested to read about modernized Russian solder training methods. Good detail stuff 👍