Continuing Dilemmas: Russia and Twenty-First-Century Positional Warfare

Late nineteenth- and twentieth-century warfare had one reoccurring theme: the shifting of power from mobile to positional warfare. Consequently, the question for proponents of offensive doctrine related to the restoration of mobility during times in which new developments favored defense and complicated offense. The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War demonstrates that this is continuing into the twenty-first century. The characteristics of modern conventional war as they currently stand complicate offensive warfare. The question of how to restore mobility to achieve battlefield gains is one that Russia must answer again in the present century. Russia’s historical approach may be inadequate in current conditions. The Russian military has already made several adaptations in its attempts to deal with this problem and is trying to figure out how to restore mobility to the battlefield. This article assesses the following: historical Russian offensive doctrine; the characteristics of war that complicate further offensive action; and initial failures, attempted adaptations, and current Russian military academia on the subject. The United States can learn a lot by observing what comes out of Russian military academia, and it might possibly predict future Russian strategies based on its findings.