How has Russian training—in theory and practice—changed throughout the Russia-Ukraine War, and what are the potential long-term consequences of these adjustments? To fully understand this adaptation, this research must examine Russia's capacity to recruit, train, equip, and employ its armed forces, including the modernization of its mobilization and readiness systems.
Specifically, how are lessons on modern warfare being internalized and promulgated into training, exercises, and training doctrine? To what extent is this training being updated, and how does the Russian military effectively function as an operational and strategic learning organization?
Furthermore, how do these personnel and training adaptations impact the morale of the Russian military, and what specific factors impact its will to fight? Ultimately, what are the broader implications of these training, mobilization, and personnel adjustments for the future capabilities and professionalism of the Russian force?
- Abravanel, Maj. Ran, "Blurring Conceptual Boundaries: Understanding Russia's International Behavior by Delving into the Russian Mind," ACSC EL 2023, 7 pgs.
- The paper explains that Russian decision-making relies on a unique cultural calculus where suffering and casualties are viewed as inevitable sacrifices necessary for salvation, rather than strict costs to be avoided. This "infinite messianic time framing" provides the Russian military and populace with an artificially high tolerance for casualties. While Western analysts might expect the morale of ill-prepared and inadequately equipped soldiers to collapse, Abravanel argues that Russia's culturally ingrained continuous-struggle view of reality significantly bolsters their long-term resilience and will to fight.
- Bowron, James, "Russian Battlefield Losses: Why Russia Will Rely upon Nuclear Threats when Dealing with the West in the Future," AWC Russia RTF, 2023, 35 pgs.
- Examines Russia's capacity to recruit, train, equip, and employ its armed forces by highlighting the devastating impact of the war in Ukraine, which forced a mass mobilization of 300,000 personnel who suffer from an acute lack of training. The paper highlights a severe training deficit; for example, Soviet-era tank crews traditionally received two years of training, but Russia no longer has the time or equipment to properly train its new recruits, which only accelerates equipment losses on the battlefield. The implications for Russia's future capabilities and professionalism are dire, as the paper assesses it will take at least a decade to rebuild its conventional forces and training pipelines. In the interim, Russia is expected to function with a shattered conventional military, forcing the nation to lower its threshold for nuclear weapons employment to project power and deter adversaries.
- Child, Justin, "Rebuilding Russia's Military: Trying to Spin Straw into Gold," ACSC Russia RTF, 2024, 21 pgs.
- This paper addresses Russia's capacity to recruit and reconstitute its military, as well as its function as a learning organization. Internalizing lessons from its tactical failures in Ukraine, the Russian military is functioning as a learning organization by abandoning its fragile Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) structure in favor of returning to larger, traditional division-based formations. To fill these expanded ranks, Russia heavily prioritizes recruiting contract soldiers and Private Military Companies (PMCs) through massive financial incentives to reach a 1.5-million-man force. However, Child notes that this rapid expansion is fiscally unsustainable and exacerbates systemic weaknesses. Regarding military morale and future capabilities, the paper assesses that payment delays and unfulfilled promises are already degrading trust and morale within the ranks, which will ultimately leave Russia with an undermanned, undermotivated, and ineffective future military force.
- Crouch, Lt. Col. Carianne, "Information is Power: For Russia, It Is Really All about Defense," AWC SSP, 2020, 51 pgs.
- Addresses how the Russian military functions as a strategic learning organization by internalizing lessons from Western military interventions to update its warfighting doctrine. The paper notes that after observing the success of U.S. precision conventional strikes in Iraq and the influence of Western-backed "color revolutions," Russian leadership realized their regime was vulnerable to similar regime-change tactics. As a result, Russia learned to adapt by creating "New Generation Warfare" (NGW), a doctrine that integrates asymmetric, cyber, and information warfare to demoralize opponents and achieve strategic objectives without crossing the threshold of direct conventional military intervention, as successfully demonstrated during the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
- Dolan, Capt. Joseph P., "In their Words: Russian A2/AD Characteristics in the Baltics," SOS AUAR, 2020, 10 pgs.
- Answers how lessons on modern warfare are promulgated into training and exercises, further illustrating the Russian military's role as a learning organization. The paper details how Russia utilizes large-scale, joint military exercises like Ocean Shield to integrate its naval, air, and ground forces and refine its tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) for complex Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) operations. Furthermore, Russia updates its training by directly monitoring and mirroring NATO exercises—such as simulating attacks against NATO's BALTOPS exercise—to drill its air defense forces on rapid deployment, target acquisition, and system integration under strict time limits, demonstrating a continuous cycle of internalizing adversary capabilities to improve combat readiness.
- Fineran, Col. Thaddeus D., "Russian Military Reform after the 2008 Georgian War," AWC elective paper (Russian Foreign Policy), 7 pgs.
- Addresses how the Russian military functions as an operational learning organization by examining how it internalized lessons from the 2008 Georgian war to modernize its mobilization and readiness systems. After the short conflict exposed severe personnel and command deficiencies, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov initiated sweeping reforms to eliminate the bloated Soviet "cadre unit" construct, which had previously relied on the mass mobilization of untrained conscripts. To update training and readiness, the military shifted to a streamlined, agile brigade structure composed of fully manned, permanent battle-ready units and focused on enhancing the overall military education system. While these doctrinal changes demonstrated an ability to learn and adapt to asymmetric, regional threats, the paper notes that the overall professionalism of the future force continues to be hampered by deep-seated corruption and entrenched military interests.
- Gaxiola, Maj. Kaitlin S. Stark, "Russian Military Ethics: Their Impact of Russian Leadership Decision Making and Why it Matters to the United States," AFGC 2025, 46 pgs.
- Stark addresses the deficiencies in Russian military training and their severe impacts on future professionalism, morale, and the will to fight. The paper highlights that training is primarily conducted by officers with little to no input from Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), and military exercises often lack strong opposing forces (OPFOR), rendering the training unrealistic and diminishing its overall value. Furthermore, a high turnover rate means resources are spent on basic onboarding rather than continuation training, leaving forces ill-prepared for modern warfare. Regarding morale, Stark argues that a pervasive culture of corruption, a brutal and self-depriving ethos, and a lack of ethical leadership have led to widespread human rights abuses and high desertion rates, severely degrading the Russian military's morale and its overall will to fight.
- Ikonomov, Capt. Vladimir, "A Minor Loss: Russia's Employment of Troops of Different Nationalities," ACSC paper (Russia Research Task Force), 2024, 24 pgs. Winner of the ACSC Outstanding International Officer Research Award
- Ikonomov addresses Russia’s capacity to recruit, equip, and employ its armed forces by examining its historical and modern reliance on ethnic minority populations to plug manpower gaps. The paper details how Russia uses enticing sign-up bonuses and high salaries to recruit minority battalions but employs them as expendable troops in the deadliest battles. Although this answers Russia's immediate need to recruit and employ forces, these exploitative employment tactics and poor equipping standards directly impact the morale and will to fight of these minority troops, leading to complaints and public outcries over their expendability on the frontline.
- Johnson, Maj. Kyle, "The Soviet War in Afghanistan and the Collapse of the Soviet Union," ACSC EL 2020, 12 pgs.
- Provides historical context on Russian military morale by examining how the Soviet armed forces' will to fight was previously destroyed. The paper details how the lack of clear political objectives and the brutal nature of the Afghan war eroded the military's credibility, leading to the "Afghan syndrome" where veterans returned completely disillusioned and were shamed by the public. This catastrophic collapse in morale ultimately stripped the government of the political will to use the army to quell domestic uprisings, contributing to the fall of the Soviet Union.
- Morris Lt. Col. Paul, "Russian Deep Operations: A Contemporary Application," AWC SSP, 2020, 24 pgs.
- Addresses the Russian military as a strategic learning organization by demonstrating how Russian strategists observe and adapt to Western actions. The paper notes that Russian leaders closely analyzed the Arab Spring and various Color Revolutions to learn how to counter what they perceived as Western subversion and foreign interference. Russia internalized these lessons to modernize its doctrine, adapting concepts like "Reflexive Control" to manipulate adversary decision-making and developing hybrid warfare strategies to seize territory—such as in Crimea and Georgia—while maintaining plausible deniability.
- Nesselhuf, Maj. F. Jon, "Up to Kalibr: Why Failure in Ukraine Will Not Change the Russian Aerospace Defense Force," ACSC paper (Russia Research Task Force), 2024, 20 pgs.
- Nesselhuf examines how the Russian Aerospace Defense Force (RADF) functions as an operational and strategic learning organization by internalizing lessons from the war in Ukraine. Rather than adopting Western-style offensive air campaigns following their initial failures, Russian military thinkers assess that the conflict validates their prewar defensive assumptions, effectively using confirmation bias in their organizational learning. The RADF blames its shortcomings on intelligence and command-and-control limitations, choosing to double down on standoff weapons, ground-based air defenses, and a massive influx of attritable Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) rather than reforming crewed tactics. Consequently, the future capabilities of the RADF will not resemble a professionalized offensive air force, but rather a defensive force reliant on surface-to-air missiles and overwhelming barrages of cheap cruise missiles.
- Perry, Maj. Frank, "Rose-Colored Glasses: How Western Mirroring Could Result in Inadvertent Nuclear War with Russia," ACSC Russia RTF, 2022, 18 pgs.
- Further addresses Russian military morale by examining the cultural and societal factors that bolster domestic resilience. The paper argues that Russia's history of autocracy and the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church cultivate a collectivist "honor in suffering" and a remarkably high pain threshold among its people. Combined with state-controlled media that heavily manipulates the public narrative, this cultural deference to leadership ensures robust public support and a resilient will to fight, even when the government engages in aggressive or internationally antagonistic military actions.
- Pickart, Col. Damien, "Privatizing Russian Geopolitics: Understanding the Role of Private Military Contractors in Russian Hybrid Warfare," AWC SSP, 2019, 40 pgs.
- Addresses Russian military morale and the will to fight by explaining how the Kremlin masks the true human cost of modern warfare to preserve domestic support. To avoid the severe drops in morale and public dissent that plagued the government during the costly wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Russia outsources highly lethal frontline combat operations to illegal Private Military Contractors (PMCs) like the Wagner Group. By transferring sacrifices to deniable mercenaries, Russia keeps its official military casualty rates artificially low, thereby averting criticism and sustaining the domestic will to fight.
- Pomaro, Lt. Col. Nicholas, "Russia's Application of Military Power in the Syrian Conflict: 2015-2017," AWC SSP. 2019. 11 pgs.
- Addresses how the Russian military functions as an operational and strategic learning organization by utilizing the Syrian civil war to internalize lessons on modern warfare. Russia used the conflict as a real-world testing ground, utilizing short unit deployments to keep troops fresh while providing valuable combat and operational planning experience to a broad swath of its personnel. Furthermore, the military deliberately used the Syrian theater to evaluate new equipment, identify design flaws, and inform future investments and production, directly updating its forces and capabilities for future conflicts.
- Stoll, Maj. Viktor, "Fortress on the Azov: Re-learning Strongpoint Defense of Urban Terrain in LSCO," WBY 2022.
- Directly answers the subcategory regarding Russian military morale and the factors that impact its will to fight. The author examines the protracted siege of the Azovstal complex in Mariupol, explaining that engaging in grueling urban combat against a prepared, textbook "strongpoint" defense significantly degraded the attacking army's will to fight. The paper notes that the prolonged Ukrainian resistance successfully tied down a considerable proportion of Russia's most capable and motivated combat formations, heavily taxed their logistics train, and continually sapped Russian and proxy morale, ultimately resulting in a Russian force that "by all accounts looks highly demoralized at present."
- Tittinger, Maj. James E., "Preparing for the Rain: Defending USAFE from Russia's Standoff Capabilities," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Evaluates Russia's capacity to train and employ its armed forces by examining the gap between pre-war modernization assessments and Russia's actual performance in the Ukraine War. The paper highlights that the conflict revealed significant shortcomings in Russian logistics, ground movement, and dynamic targeting, proving that their forces were not as prepared or capable as expected. However, despite these training and operational failures, Russia has demonstrated a stubborn capacity to adapt its industrial base for wartime production, relying heavily on modernized long-range standoff strikes—using cruise missiles and one-way attack UAVs—to bypass its tactical deficiencies and continuously attack Ukrainian infrastructure and morale.
- Weiss, Maj. J. Hunter, "Russian A2/AD Battlefield Lessons Learned and AFSPECWAR's Tactical Solution to a Strategic Problem," ACSC CYBER, 2023, 13 pgs.
- Weiss highlights how the Russian military functions as an operational learning organization by actively using combat zones to test and refine its equipment. Specifically, the paper notes that Russia used operations in Syria as the perfect testing ground to establish tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and gather lessons learned for its electronic warfare and integrated air defense systems. This continuous operational learning has allowed Russia to modernize its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities to degrade adversary communications and precision-guided munitions, demonstrating how lessons on modern warfare are actively internalized and promulgated into future doctrine and operations.