According to a recent report by a London-based think tank, the Russian Armed Forces are at their strongest and most capable since the dissolution of the Soviet Union nearly 30 years ago, despite being considerably smaller.
When the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union dissolved itself in the final days of 1991, the Russian Federation emerged as just one of 15 new republics that inherited many of the Red Army‘s weapons of war. As the economic crisis in Russia deepened through the decade, the armed forces waned in power as well. Today, however, one UK think tank warns that more than two decades of rebuilding, reforming, and reinvesting have turned Russia’s armed forces into their most potent since the Cold War ended.
On Wednesday, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) released a “strategic dossier” on Russian military modernization that documents the changes in thinking and practice in the Russian Armed Forces and some of their implications for the Western powers.
In 2018, the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy warned of “a resilient, but weakening, post-WWII international order” in which Washington’s position as chief world power is receiving new challenges from nations such as Russia and China, which it identifies as “revisionist powers.”
That an institute like the IISS would support such a notion should be unsurprising: many of the think tank’s top donors include defense contractors such as…
