Report: Russia’s Military is ‘Fundamentally Vulnerable’

Key Points and Summary – A new think tank report argues that Russia’s military is “fundamentally vulnerable” due to deep, systemic flaws exposed by the war in Ukraine.

-The early failures of the 2022 invasion were not just tactical blunders but a “systemic collapse” of a political-military machine that was misaligned with modern warfare.

-The Kremlin’s decision to launch a “Special Military Operation” was a political fiction that denied its army the necessary legal and mobilization foundations for a large-scale conflict.

-While Russia has since adapted, it has not fixed these core conceptual weaknesses, leaving it a fragile and centrally controlled force.

Russia’s Military is ‘Fundamentally Vulnerable,’ States New Report

While it may appear that Russia is currently dealing from a position of strength, and even able to negotiate for what’s now Ukrainian land in a final peace settlement, a new report points to fundamental weakness in the Russian military.

The report is from the U.S.-based think tank the Saratoga Foundation, and it’s titled “Fractured Strategy: A Systems View of Russia’s Early Failure in Ukraine.” Authored by Roger N. McDermott, the report focuses on the early months of the war, and specifically “the systemic political-military failures underpinning Russia’s early setbacks in its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.”

It’s published as part of a wider project by the Saratoga Foundation, titled The Kremlin and Strategic Failure in the Ukraine War.

An Early Slog

“Russia entered the war expecting a swift victory,” the introduction of the report says. “But flawed intelligence, rigid centralized command, fragile logistics, and fragmented inter-service coordination left its forces unable to adapt. Battalion Tactical Groups lacked manpower and redundancy; airpower could not suppress Ukrainian defenses; and Russia’s tightly coupled system meant that the failure of one component cascaded across the entire campaign.”

“Russia’s early failure in its 2022 invasion of Ukraine was not the product of a few tactical blunders, it was the systemic collapse of a political-military machine misaligned with the realities of modern war,” the executive summary of the report says.

“At the heart of this unraveling was the Kremlin’s decision to wage a ‘Special Military Operation‘ (SMO), a political fiction that denied the legal, structural, and mobilization foundations of large-scale conflict,” the report continues. “By constraining the campaign to fit an ideological narrative of swift, low-cost regime change, Moscow stripped its own military art, especially the Initial Period of War (IPW), of the mass, depth, and synchronization it requires to succeed.”

Essentially, Ukraine resisted more than Russia had expected.

“The Kremlin’s strategic approach to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine was grounded in a core misapprehension: that Ukraine would not resist. From this faulty premise, a cascade of interdependent errors emerged: errors not simply of execution, but of doctrine, force design, and systemic logic. The Russian General Staff entered the campaign not with a coherent war plan but with an ideologically distorted framework imposed by political leadership.”

When he worked for the Jamestown Foundation, McDermott’s bio stated that he “specializes in Russian and Central Asian defense and security issues.”

He also wrote a 2011 paper called “The Reform of Russia’s Conventional Armed Forces: Problems, Challenges and Policy Implications.”

The Author Speaks

McDermott, the author, gave an interview to the Kyiv Post about the report.

“McDermott’s analysis has evolved to explain the current, grinding war of attrition. Speaking to Kyiv Post, he emphasized that while Russia has adapted ‘materially,’ it has not changed “conceptually.”

“The system, he says, is now ‘harder, thicker, and more industrial,’ yet remains ‘centrally controlled and politically bounded, exactly the fragility I highlighted at the outset,’” the interview says. “The conflict, McDermott explains, continues to be defined by a ‘tightly coupled, politically constrained machine meeting a flexible, networked opponent.”

The Resistance

The report concludes that Ukraine’s actions were also crucial in the early days of the war.

“Crucially, the Ukrainian defense effort extended beyond the military domain into a whole-of-society resistance. Civilian populations played an active role in reporting Russian movements, preparing urban defenses, and disseminating real-time battlefield intelligence through secure messaging apps,” the Saratoga report said.

“This form of participatory defense created a resilient internal security architecture, one that constantly fed information into the Ukrainian military system while denying Russia control over occupied zones.

“Moreover, Ukraine’s ability to mobilize civilian resistance turned cities into contested battlespaces where Russian units lacked both the force density and legitimacy to operate effectively.”

About the Author: Stephen Silver

Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.

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