Research Seminar

Tuesday 10 October 2023

5.15pm in Room 203 (The Lecture Room), 10 University Gardens.

Johan Norenberg, Deputy Research Director, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Stockholm, Sweden

"Using Military Exercises to Gauge Warfighting Potential - the Case of Russia 2009 - 2022"

In the 2010s, the Russian Armed Forces carried out major military exercises of an increasing scale and scope, arguably corresponding to strategic warfighting operations with joint inter-service groups of forces with up to 300,000 servicemen. In 2022,as Russia expanded its war in Ukraine into a full scale invasion, the Russian Armed Forces appeared smaller and less capable than pre-war exercise based assessments had suggested. This talk will discuss reasons for this range from the problems with inferring wartime capability from peacetime exercises to issues specific to Russia's Armed Forces, such as corruption.

The seminar will be accessible via Zoom

All welcome!

T-72B3 tanks of the Russian Southern Military District's 150th Rifle Division take part in a military exercise at Kadamovsky Range. (Erik Romanenko\TASS via Getty Images)


First published: 5 October 2023