NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / World

Russia's military, once creaky, is modern and lethal

By Anton Troianovski, Michael Schwirtz and Andrew E. Kramer
New York Times·
28 Jan, 2022 05:00 AM10 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Russian T-72B3 tanks during drills this month at the Kadamovskiy firing range in southern Russia. Photo / AP

Russian T-72B3 tanks during drills this month at the Kadamovskiy firing range in southern Russia. Photo / AP

A significantly upgraded military has emerged as a key tool of Vladimir Putin's foreign policy, as he flexes his might around the globe and, most ominously, on the Ukraine border.

In the early years of Vladimir Putin's tenure as Russia's leader, the country's military was a hollowed-out but nuclear-armed shell.

It struggled to keep submarines afloat in the Arctic and an outgunned insurgency at bay in Chechnya. Senior officers sometimes lived in mouldy, rat-infested tenements. And instead of socks, poorly trained soldiers often wrapped their feet in swaths of cloth, the way their Soviet and Tsarist predecessors had.

Two decades later, it is a far different fighting force that has massed near the border with Ukraine. Under Putin's leadership, it has been overhauled into a modern sophisticated army, able to deploy quickly and with lethal effect in conventional conflicts, military analysts said. It features precision-guided weaponry, a newly streamlined command structure and well-fed and professional soldiers. And they still have the nuclear weapons.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The modernised military has emerged as a key tool of Putin's foreign policy: capturing Crimea, intervening in Syria, keeping the peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan and, just this month, propping up a Russia-friendly leader in Kazakhstan. Now it is in the middle of its most ambitious — and most ominous — operation yet: using threats and potentially, many fear, force, to bring Ukraine back into Moscow's sphere of influence.

"The mobility of the military, its preparedness and its equipment are what allow Russia to pressure Ukraine and to pressure the West," said Pavel Luzin, a Russian security analyst. "Nuclear weapons are not enough."

Without firing a shot, Putin has forced the Biden administration to shelve other foreign policy priorities and contend with Kremlin grievances the White House has long dismissed — in particular reversing Ukraine's Westward lean in the post-Soviet period.

It is Putin's highest-stakes use of the military to muscle Russia back into the global relevance it lost with the ending of the Cold War. Putin laid out that doctrine in 2018, when he used his annual state-of-the-nation speech to unveil new nuclear weapons that could fly 20 times the speed of sound.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"No one listened to us," Putin said in his address, which included a video simulation showing a Russian missile heading toward the United States. "Listen to us now."

Today, it is the overhaul of the conventional forces that has provided leverage in the Ukraine crisis.

Discover more

World

Russia steps up propaganda war amid tensions with Ukraine

26 Jan 04:00 AM
World

US details costs of a Russian invasion of Ukraine

08 Jan 09:55 PM
World

Russia, at an impasse with the West, warns it is ready to abandon diplomacy

13 Jan 08:32 PM
World

As the West prepares for war, Ukraine's leaders play down Russia threat

25 Jan 07:40 PM

The T-72B3 tanks amassed on Ukraine's border have a new thermal optics system for nighttime fighting as well as guided missiles with twice the range of other tanks, according to Robert Lee, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Ph.D. candidate at King's College in London, who is a Russian military expert. Kalibr cruise missiles deployed on ships and submarines in the Black Sea and Iskander-M rockets arrayed along the border can hit targets just about anywhere inside Ukraine, Lee said.

In the past decade, the Russian air force has acquired more than 1,000 new aircraft, according to a 2020 article by Alexei Krivoruchko, a deputy defense minister. This includes the country's most advanced fighters, the SU-35S; a squadron of these has been deployed to Belarus before joint military exercises next month.

The new capabilities were evident in Russia's intervention in Syria in 2015. They were not only effective, but caught some in the US military off guard.

"I'm embarrassed to admit, I was surprised a few years ago when Kalibr missiles came flying out of the Caspian Sea, hitting targets in Syria," said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the US Army in Europe. "That was a surprise to me, not only the capability, but I didn't even know they were there."

Kremlin thinking has also evolved over the size of the armed forces. The military relies less on a dwindling number of conscripts and more on a slimmed-down, well-trained core of roughly 400,000 contract soldiers.

These soldiers receive better treatment. Visiting the Defense Ministry in December, Putin boasted that the average lieutenant now made just over the equivalent of US$1,000 per month, better than the average salary in other sectors. The federal government, he added, was spending about US$1.5 billion on subsidising private housing for service members.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

And all Russian soldiers are now required to be deployed with thick, military issued socks.

What is new is not just Russia's upgraded equipment, but the evolving theory of how the Kremlin uses it. The military has honed an approach that Dmitry Adamsky, a scholar of international security at Reichman University in Israel, calls "cross-domain coercion" — blending the real or threatened use of force with diplomacy, cyberattacks and propaganda to achieve political aims.

A Ukrainian soldier in a trench on the front line this week in Popasna, Ukraine. Photo / Brendan Hoffman, The New York Times
A Ukrainian soldier in a trench on the front line this week in Popasna, Ukraine. Photo / Brendan Hoffman, The New York Times

That blended strategy is playing out in the current crisis around Ukraine. Russia is pushing for immediate wide-ranging concessions from the West. Russian troop movements into allied Belarus put a potential invasion force within 100 miles of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Russian state media is warning that Ukrainian forces are the ones preparing acts of aggression.

And on January 14, hackers brought down dozens of Ukrainian government websites and posted a message on one stating, "Be afraid and expect the worst."

"You see some cyber, you see diplomacy, you see military exercises," Adamsky said. "They are all related by design."

Not all the forces arrayed along the Ukrainian border are Russia's most advanced. The ones amassed in the north have older weaponry and are mostly there to intimidate and stretch Ukrainian resources, said Oleksiy Arestovych, a former Ukrainian military intelligence officer who is now a political and military analyst.

The more well-equipped and modernised units, he said, have moved into the area close to two breakaway provinces in Ukraine's east, where Russia instigated a separatist war in 2014 that continues today.

Russia's military modernisation is also, increasingly, meant to send a message to the United States, projecting power beyond Eastern Europe, frustrating and sometimes surprising US officials.

It took Russia's military transport planes only hours, for instance, to start ferrying about 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops, along with heavy armour, to the Southern Caucasus after Putin brokered an end to the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In Syria, where Russia intervened in 2015 using devastating airstrikes and limited ground troops to protect President Bashar Assad, Russia's advancements showed it could effectively deploy precision-guided weaponry, long an edge that Western armed forces had held over Russia.

Russia used the war in Syria, experts say, as a laboratory to refine tactics and weaponry, and to gain combat experience for much of its force. More responsibility was delegated to lower-level officers, a degree of autonomy that contrasts with the civilian government structure in the Putin era. Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu said last month that all ground troop commanders, 92 per cent of air force pilots and 62 per cent of the navy had combat experience.

"They showed to themselves and the whole world they are able to wage large-scale operations with precision weapons, and long-range weapons, and intelligence capability to support it," Adamsky, the expert based in Israel, said.

For all its strides in recent years, Russia's military retains a critical weakness of its Soviet predecessor: the civilian side of the country's economy, nearly devoid of high-tech manufacturing and corporate investment in research and development. Army expenditures amount to a far higher percentage of the gross domestic product than in most European countries, starving other sectors.

When Ukraine's military shot down Russian reconnaissance drones, for example, they discovered electronics and motors bought from hobby drone companies in Western Europe, according to a report published in November by Conflict Armament Research, a company based in Britain that specialises in tracing weaponry.

Russia possesses few new weapons systems fully created from the ground up, analysts say. Much of its modernisation consists of refurbishments of older equipment.

But individual weapons systems are less important than the military's innovative use of knowledge gained in each of the engagements of Putin's tenure, said Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who was Nato commander when war broke out in Ukraine in 2014.

"The compliment that we have to pay to Russia is that they are a learning and adaptive force," Breedlove said. "Every time we see them in conflict, they get a little better and a little better."

Putin was only a few months into his first presidential term when he faced a military catastrophe. On August 12, 2000, a torpedo exploded inside the nuclear submarine Kursk, sending it to the Barents Sea floor with 118 sailors. The Russian navy's failed rescue mission, leading to the deaths of all aboard and an uncharacteristic mea culpa from Putin, underscored the military's ineptitude.

The sinking came to define Putin's first term, along with a vicious and bloody war in Chechnya where the Russian military struggled for years to quash an Islamic insurgency.

A major turning point came in 2008 when a long-simmering conflict over disputed territories in the Republic of Georgia exploded into war.

Russian forces quickly overwhelmed their much smaller Georgian neighbours, but the war uncovered deep deficiencies in the Russian military. Ground troops were not in radio contact with the air force, leading to several serious friendly fire attacks. Communications were so bad that some officers had to use their personal cellphones. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers broke down frequently.

The failures prompted a massive shake-up of the Russian armed forces. The Soviet military's prowess at land warfare was revived, with improvements such as revamped artillery technology, according to Mathieu Boulègue, a research fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House in London.

Just over a decade later, Russia's tools of electronic warfare, which can be used to intercept or jam enemy communications and knock drones off course and out of the sky, are believed far superior to the U.S. military's, analysts said.

"We're playing catch-up now," Hodges said. "For the last 20 years, we were focused on iPhones or cellphones and terrorist networks, while they continued to develop substantial, powerful jamming and intercept capabilities."

There have been some setbacks for Moscow, including unsettling weapons failures. In 2019, a prototype of a nuclear-propelled cruise missile — hailed by Putin as the centerpiece of a new arms race with the United States — blew up during a test, killing at least seven people and spewing radiation for miles.

But as the Kremlin's rhetoric increasingly cast Russia as locked in an existential conflict with the West, little expense was spared. The investment in the military was accompanied by a militarisation of Russian society under Putin, entrenching the concept of a motherland surrounded by enemies and the possibility of a coming war.

All those developments, analysts say, make it hard for the West to stop Putin from attacking Ukraine, if he is determined.

"There's very little we can do to deny Russia's ability to wage further warfare against Ukraine," Boulègue said. "We can't deter a worldview."

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.


Written by: Anton Troianovski, Michael Schwirtz and Andrew E. Kramer
Photographs by: Brendan Hoffman
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from World

EntertainmentUpdated

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

05 Jul 12:36 AM
World

‘Mass casualty event’: Texas floods leave 13 dead, girls missing from summer camp

04 Jul 10:38 PM
World

'Ready to engage': Hamas signals openness to US-backed ceasefire

04 Jul 10:08 PM

There’s more to Hawai‘i than beaches and buffets – here’s how to see it differently

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from World

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

05 Jul 12:36 AM

He starred in shows like Nip/Tuck and Home and Away.

‘Mass casualty event’: Texas floods leave 13 dead, girls missing from summer camp

‘Mass casualty event’: Texas floods leave 13 dead, girls missing from summer camp

04 Jul 10:38 PM
'Ready to engage': Hamas signals openness to US-backed ceasefire

'Ready to engage': Hamas signals openness to US-backed ceasefire

04 Jul 10:08 PM
Wife awarded £230m in third-largest divorce settlement in English history

Wife awarded £230m in third-largest divorce settlement in English history

04 Jul 09:50 PM
From early mornings to easy living
sponsored

From early mornings to easy living

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP