Armed Forces of Russia

Broad area of activity

The entire theatre and the strategic depth behind it — a front from the northern border axes to the southern land bridge, a long-range strike campaign reaching every part of Ukraine, and a naval and aerospace component operating from well outside the war zone.

Notable history

A reformed army that met a war it had not designed for. The post-2008 Serdyukov and Shoigu reforms replaced a mass-mobilisation structure with smaller, permanently ready formations built around contract soldiers, and the Syria intervention and the 2014–15 Donbas operations appeared to validate the result. February 2022 did not. The plan assumed a short campaign against an army that would not fight, and its failure at Kyiv consumed the professional core the reforms had built. What has been reconstituted since is a different institution: refilled by partial mobilisation in 2022 and thereafter by paid contract recruitment at scale, fighting an infantry-heavy attritional war, drawing on refurbished storage stock and on ammunition supplied from North Korea, and expanded again in 2023–24 by the re-creation of military districts and additional formations. It takes ground, slowly, at a cost it has so far proved willing to pay.

Strengths

Mass, in manpower, tube artillery and reactivated equipment reserves, and a defence-industrial base placed on a war footing while its opponents' were not. Glide bombs, adopted from 2023, give stand-off strike at a scale and cost no partner-supplied Ukrainian capability matches. A recruitment system that has so far substituted payment for a politically costly second mobilisation. Deep fortification engineering, proven in 2023. Strategic depth that keeps most of its industry and much of its aviation beyond reach.

Limitations

Quality dilution after four years of attrition among experienced cadres, which is why assault tactics have grown simpler rather than more sophisticated. Centralised command that limits initiative below the level where decisions are needed. Equipment reactivation is drawing on progressively older storage. The strategic rear is no longer a sanctuary: refining, export and airbase infrastructure has proved reachable, and the force has had to redistribute air defence to cover it. And the structures doing some of the hardest fighting — volunteer formations, the Chechen structures, the reorganised PMC lineage — sit partly outside this tree, which is itself a statement about how coherent the whole is.

Subordinate & associated

• Ground Forces Branch
• Aerospace Forces (VKS) Branch
• Airborne Forces (VDV) Branch
• Navy Branch
• Strategic Missile Forces Branch
• Special Operations Forces Branch
• Railway Troops Branch
• Logistics & Support (MTO) Branch

Related organisations

• Wagner Group → Africa Corps Institutionally linked to · as of 2023-06 · high confidence

  Nominally private 2014–2023, then re-subordinated to Ministry of Defence control after the June 2023 mutiny and the death of its founder. The edge records the post-2023 institutional relationship, not a command position inside the armed forces tree.

Related locations

Moscow: National military command and ceremonial centre — long-standing public knowledge. Rostov-on-Don: Long-publicised military administrative centre for the southern theatre.

Preferred operating methods

Fires before movement, pressure before manoeuvre. The pre-war doctrine of battalion tactical groups conducting rapid deep operations was abandoned after 2022, when it failed against a defended state. What replaced it is recognisably different: massed artillery and glide bombs used to make a position untenable rather than to support an assault on it; small dismounted infantry groups attacking on narrow frontages once it has been reduced; and simultaneous pressure across a wide sector rather than concentration for breakthrough. Running alongside the ground war is a separate strategic campaign against Ukraine's electricity system, conducted seasonally with cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and mass-produced one-way attack drones — a cost-exchange strategy against air defence as much as a destructive one, and the clearest expression of the force's preference for imposing cost over seizing objectives.

A broad generalisation about how this organisation operates, graded as an assessment — not a description of current tactics, and deliberately carrying no capability or effectiveness score.

Command style

Centralised, with authority held well above the level at which decisions are executed and limited latitude for junior initiative. Formation commanders are held accountable for progress on a timescale that encourages costly attacks. This has been partially offset since 2023 by the growth of drone units operating on shorter loops than the formal chain of command allows, which is the clearest internal tension in the force — and by a parallel structure of volunteer and irregular formations whose relationship to the General Staff has repeatedly been renegotiated rather than settled.

Where this generalisation breaks down

The generalisation fails in three ways. First, it describes the force since mid-2022 and not the force that invaded: the 2022 campaign attempted exactly the rapid deep operation this record says the force does not conduct. Second, performance is uneven between branches and formations — airborne and naval infantry units have repeatedly been employed as a mobile reserve requiring more coordination than the general pattern implies, and the aerospace and strategic-rocket components fight a different war from the ground forces entirely. Third, "accepting casualties" describes observed practice, not intent, and this module has no basis for claiming what any commander considers acceptable.

Observed adaptations

• Adoption of glide-bomb kits on existing munitions from 2023, giving stand-off strike at scale from aircraft that could not previously operate near the line — the most consequential Russian adaptation of the war.

  as of 2024-06Confidence: HighSources: RUSI component and capability analyses · UK Ministry of Defence — Defence Intelligence updates

• Domestic mass production of the Iranian-derived one-way attack drone design at volumes far beyond the original transfers, converting a scarce precision-strike problem into a saturation one.

  as of 2026-06Confidence: ModerateSources: UK Ministry of Defence — Defence Intelligence updates · ISW campaign assessments

• A shift from mechanised assault to small dismounted infantry groups, forced by drone saturation making vehicle concentrations unsurvivable near the line.

  as of 2025-06Confidence: HighSources: RUSI component and capability analyses · ISW campaign assessments

• Redistribution of air defence and the addition of point defences around refining and export infrastructure, in response to a Ukrainian deep-strike campaign the pre-war posture did not anticipate.

  as of 2026-08Confidence: ModerateSources: ISW campaign assessments · RUSI component and capability analyses

What remains unknown

• Russian doctrinal publications since 2022 are not available, so this record describes observed practice rather than formal doctrine.
• Force strengths, dispositions and casualty figures are not published, and this atlas makes no claim about any of them. Wartime groupings differ from the peacetime affiliations recorded in the tree below.
• The relationship between the formal structure and the volunteer, regional and irregular formations fighting alongside it is described differently by different Russian sources and has changed repeatedly.

Campaigns

Campaigns naming this organisation as a participant. The campaign record owns the relationship and grades it; this list is computed.

• Force generation and mobilisation Opposing force · Since February 2022 · high confidence · as of 2026-06
• The February 2022 invasion and the failure at Kyiv Primary force · February – April 2022 · high confidence · as of 2022-04

  The invading force as a whole. Component commands are recorded separately where the module publishes them.