Russia & Ukraine

OVERVIEW

Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a war of conquest to reestablish a Russian empire and overturn the post–Cold War international order. His full-scale invasion of Ukraine marks a defining geopolitical moment that threatens global stability and challenges the security of the United States and its allies to a degree unprecedented since the Second World War.

ISW launched its Russia-Ukraine portfolio in 2014 after Russia illegally occupied Crimea and has analyzed Russian military operations, political warfare, and ceasefire agreements in Ukraine since then. When Russia overtly entered the Syrian Civil War and provided airpower to the Assad Regime, ISW expanded its coverage to Russia as a global actor.

The ISW Russia & Ukraine Team studies the threat Russia poses to the United States, its NATO and Asia-Pacific allies, its European and global partners, and to independent states once part of the Soviet Union. The team assesses Russian military capabilities and exercises, functional and doctrinal orders of battle, force generation, command and control, technological innovation, defense industry, defense cooperation, and way of war. ISW analyzes Russian grand strategic objectives, informational, diplomatic, and economic campaigns and the stability of Putin’s regime, Kremlin power dynamics, and the interaction of the Kremlin with the Russian population, ISW forecasts the Kremlin’s ability to project power and wage armed conflict in Europe and globally.