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Program in Arms Control & Domestic and International Security 

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Evolution of Russian Military Force Since 1979 

 

Christopher Chappell 

 

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract 

This paper aims to show the evolution of the Russian military through the wars in Afghanistan, 

Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine. Each conflict provides a lesson in army organization, strategy, 

and tactics to the Russian military. The section on Afghanistan details the strategy of the Soviet 

invasion. Rough terrain as well as too much emphasis on holding critical routes drew attention 

away from creating positive interactions with the local population. Only protecting critical routes 

allowed the Mujahideen to operate freely and harass Soviet helicopters. The section on Chechnya 

argues that the Russian military learned that contracted, professional soldiers in conjunction with 

special forces were more effective than conscripts. The conflict in Georgia broadened warfare to 

include cyber, economic, and political attacks. The final section about Ukraine argues that 

through the Gerasimov doctrine, Russia is able to use ambiguity to achieve its foreign policy 

goals in countries of the former Soviet Union.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Evolution of Russian Military Force Since 1979 
Chris Chappell 

 

Introduction 

Russia is no stranger to armed conflict—a large amount of their patriotism and cultural 

identity stems directly from the hard fought battles and eventual victory of World War II. 

Military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz famously said, “War is the continuation of politics by 

other means,” referring to the point after diplomacy has broken down or perhaps even 

sidestepped altogether. In a period defined by multinational coalitions and cooperation, Russia 

has largely remained true to a doctrine of unilateral problem solving that put it at odds with much 

of the Western world. In its multiple instances of armed conflict, Russia has been accused by 

experts of breaching international laws and customs. Due to this, Russia is seen as an outsider in 

the predominantly Euro-centric and Americentric international systems. Russia is still a major 

player in the international community, as evidenced by its new emphasis on foreign intervention. 

This may be due to Russia’s independence and simultaneous resistance of globalist trends, or 

residual tensions from the Cold War period. By isolating the reasons why the Russian Federation 

uses conflict, we may better understand its foreign policy and how it approaches problems such 

as international terrorism, regional issues, and other players in the international system. More 

importantly, it will provide a conceptual framework to extrapolate upon to see how it will 

interact in these areas in the future. As of April 2017, Russia is generally viewed as a diplomatic 

obstacle which presents a high degree of difficulty in UN Security Council proceedings and 

decisions. This paper aims to show situations in which Russia has used military force to achieve 

foreign policy objectives in the past and also to show situations where it would be likely to use 

force in the future. As a broad topic that encompasses a variety of information, each of the 

following case studies of Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine will be divided into 

three subsections: international politics, regional politics, and evolution of military strategy 

components. 

 The most crucial evolutions in Russia’s use of military force and strategy occurred during 

the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Specifically, this conflict saw changes from a strictly 

regimented army into one capable of fighting an asymmetric war. This conflict set the stage for 

future military development and huge political ramifications like the rise of Islamic terrorism. 

The invasion’s prologue was rather complex;, as the Soviet’s favored leader, Muhammad Daud, 

began to grow closer to international Islamic factions in 1975. The Shah of Iran, who was loyal 

to the United States for intelligence and economic reasons, offered support for Daud’s 

efforts.  Daud, along with numerous other Islamic forces, unified the People’s Democratic Party 

of Afghanistan and became the ruling party of Afghanistan in 1977. While the chaotic events of 

the following year are ambiguous in terms of cause or blame, the result was the revolt organized 

by Soviet-trained Afghan army and air force officers against the Daud government. This ended 

not only in the removal of said government, but the members of the government were killed. 

Because the Soviet-trained agents were involved, it is fair to assume that Moscow played a role 

in orchestrating the revolution. Afghanistan held strategic importance in its capacity as a buffer 

zone between the pro-west Iran, Pakistan, and to a lesser extent, India. Khrushchev allocated 

millions of dollars in military, humanitarian, and infrastructural aid to the Afghan government. 



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Even this aid did not halt resistance against the new ruling party, however, as rebel groups 

organized “assassination squads conducting house-to-house searches” for Russian nationals, 

killing them, then desecrating their bodies.  In response, Soviet advisors and Soviet-trained 

elements brutally attacked even loosely-affiliated villages, causing the situation to spiral further 

out of control and ultimately resulted in more “advisory” forces being sent into Afghanistan. To 

address the concerns of the international community, the Soviet government insisted that its 

military intervention was requested by the Afghan government, a claim that would later be 

proven false. 

 The invasion itself followed conventional lines: secure urban centers and vital routes of 

transportation, and then spread out to secure the countryside. Alex Alexiev, author of “The War 

in Afghanistan: Soviet Strategy and the State of the Resistance,” detailed the Soviet war plan 

explaining that military, economic, and political planning focused more on influencing the local 

populations than controlling the terrain. Military operations involved using a relatively small 

force (which constituted roughly two percent of the entire Soviet military) to take control of the 

Afghan “logistics networks” and to terrorize or intimidate local villages into selling out the 

resistance fighters or, at the minimum, stop supporting them. The economic aspect focused on 

food supply and denying Mujahideen access to food as well as strangling any commerce outside 

that which was controlled by the Soviet military. Alexiev reports that the Soviet military units 

destroyed crops with “napalm and...planting anti-personnel mines in the fields.” Soviet forces 

also disabled irrigation systems, caused artificial price inflation at local markets, and gave 

farmers incentives to submit to Soviet rule. The Afghan terrain made the latter half of the battle 

plan difficult to achieve, which explains why the war devolved into a quagmire. A possible 

reason why this strategy was pursued over holding territory is the importance of depriving the 

Mujahideen of material support from sympathetic parties. Since the true feelings of the Soviet 

Politburo have been lost due to self-censorship, one can only speculate on the larger strategy. In 

his article  “The Use of Force in Soviet Foreign Policy: The Case of Afghanistan,” Joseph 

Collins argues that the larger strategy was to counter the western influences in the Middle East 

and especially Iran. In this way, the two previous articles are in agreement: both imply that the 

invasion contained a certain degree of theater, or, in other words, a broadcast of intent. Each 

large offensive was widely reported and information was disseminated to intimidate both the 

fighters and people of Afghanistan. 

 Throughout the later, counterinsurgency stage of the war, several key issues became 

apparent: guerrilla warfare was not strictly territorial, US aid to the Mujahideen grounded all but 

the most vital of helicopter missions, and that the Soviet military alone was not enough to police 

the nation of Afghanistan. These realities, along with an increasing annual expenditure and 

domestic protests, forced the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan. That is not to say 

nothing could be salvaged from the experience, however, as many lessons were learned; 

arguably the most important being the inadequacy of Soviet Forces. Whether it be due to 

relatively low troop count or the ingenuity of the Mujahideen, the Soviets were never able to cut 

off supply lines to the resistance. Foreign aid to resistance fighters further compounded the 



Evolution of Russian Military Force Since 1979 
Chris Chappell 

 

problem for Soviet planners, especially because support came from the United States, Pakistan, 

and numerous wealthy private benefactors. The Soviet Union came to know that winning the 

hearts and minds, or at the very least securing the obedience of local populations was necessary 

to success in an invasion and that heavy handed tactics that constitute nothing less than a terror 

campaign did more to motivate local populations against them. 

 Roughly the same situation would arise five years later during the First Chechen War. 

Immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Chechens tried to declare independence, but 

the process would not be completed until 1993. This prompted Boris Yeltsin’s government to 

send in troops “to restore constitutional order.” This is important because like Afghanistan, the 

Russian government did not want to appear as the aggressor. The first Chechen conflict is 

succinctly described by former Russian military analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, who describes the 

situation as a “strategic improvisation.” Both Chechen wars would expose critical flaws in the 

organizational structure of the Russian military as well as issues with the conscripts filling out 

the ranks along with the tactics they used (or forgot to use). Russian action in Chechnya began 

years before formal military intervention in December of 1994. Federal Security Service (FSB) 

operations aimed to arm and supply mercenaries for opposition groups against the new Dudayev 

regime in Chechnya. Felgenhauer goes on to outline the fundamental problems with the Russian 

military during the initial stages of the invasion and the war. There was a massive amount of 

disorder among ground units as well as resistance to the order to move to combat areas brought 

on by the combination of troops from all different types of units. Due to the combination of 

factors, morale among Russian internal troops was dangerously low and had adverse effects on 

combat performance. Operational struggles were exacerbated by poor tactics and strategists 

forgetting lessons learned in Afghanistan. The intervention itself was modeled on the U.S. led 

coalition’s invasion of Iraq during the First Gulf War, but the Russian interior troops did not 

have the coordination, organization, training, or numbers to achieve the same result. Russian 

forces did capture the Chechen capital of Grozny, but intense fighting and heavy losses forced 

Moscow to appeal for a ceasefire and eventual peace treaty. Ultimately, this conflict led to war 

crimes accrued by excessive artillery usage and engagements of undisciplined units. A key 

weakness in the Russian military was exposed during this conflict: the lack of professionalism 

and poor quality of a conscription based military.  

 The 1999 apartment bombings in Russia reopened these wounds. To build a case for war, 

Russian officials were quick to blame the bombings in Buikansk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk on a 

Chechen insurgent group. A fourth bomb was set to explode in Ryazan, but when police 

apprehended FSB officers with the same make and model of bomb used in the other bombings in 

the vicinity of an apartment complex, skeptics raised even more questions as to who was truly 

culpable.  Regardless if this attack was a false flag event, Russia went to war over it. The battle 

plan was much like the initial strategy for Afghanistan in that the primary focus was on urban 

areas. The lessons from Afghanistan and the First Chechen War were applied during this time: 

more soldiers were brought in a more organized fashion with better equipment and tactics. The 

Russian army took its first step toward a professional military akin to Western models by 



IJOIS Spring 2017, Volume III 

Program in Arms Control & Domestic and International Security 

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invading with up to forty percent of ground units enlisted under contracts (contractniki). The 

Russian strategy as a whole can simply be described in three stages: the invasion, 

counterinsurgency, and finally the period of self-policing. The first stage succeeded just as it had 

during the First Chechen War. The second marks another change in the Soviet strategy: use of 

special forces or Spetsnaz operators in conjunction with contracted soldiers to form the bulk of 

the offensive forces in counterinsurgency operations. Although a step in the right direction, these 

tactics were not as effective as modern counterinsurgency operations. The final stage was 

enlisting the aid of local Chechen confederates to self-police and maintain stability of the region 

after military occupation was no longer necessary. The Russian federal government placed its 

faith in Ramzan Kadyrov to use his paramilitary forces to perform this task. Kadyrov and his 

forces were particularly brutal however, with several alleged violations of human rights 

occurring under his command. 

 The most significant changes to the Russian military during the Chechen Wars was 

refinement of their tactics and taking the first steps toward a professional, modern army. Heavy 

use of Spetsnaz and contractniki led to a successful counterinsurgency campaign so that later use 

of local confederate paramilitary groups were able to assume control. Russian military 

formations were better prepared for the latter conflict as well, because they were trained and 

underwent regular drills. These moves increased effectiveness of ground forces as well as 

ushered the Russian military toward a professional military with a higher retention rate of 

servicemembers than the conscription system.  

 The 2008 conflict with Georgia marked the next change in Russian foreign policy. 

Russian activity included a theatrical element for the international community along with 

unorthodox tactics to weaken the Georgian position. The war with Georgia is significant for two 

reasons: it expanded the use of power to outside a strictly military capacity, much like 

Afghanistan and also it serves as a model and a warning about former Soviet States looking to 

grow closer to the West. The prelude to the war contained a series of diplomatic slights and 

military skirmishes. During this time Russia engaged in cyber, economic and psychological 

warfare. The cyber attacks were part of a broader scheme to paint Russia as something other than 

the aggressor. Ariel Cohen of the Strategic Studies Institute says that Russia’s coordinated cyber 

attack was designed to hamper Georgian communications so that the Russian narrative would be 

the only narrative of events. However, when it was discovered that Georgian government 

officials were reliant on personal email servers instead of official ones, Russia’s cyber exploits 

were revealed to the international community. The violence was short lived and ended with 

Russia claiming small portions of Georgia. Cohen argues that the implications from this conflict 

are the US/NATO affiliation was not a direct deterrent to attack,  especially within such short 

range of the Russian border. The Russian goal was to install a pro-Moscow government, granting 

Russian citizenship to nationals within the country in order to provide a pretext for invasion and 

annexation. The 2008 conflict highlights the lack of power the UN and international actors could 

bring against Russian aggression. 



Evolution of Russian Military Force Since 1979 
Chris Chappell 

 

 In light of the continuing proxy war in Ukraine this transfers well to the current situation 

in Ukraine since many of the same factors existed in the prelude to the conflict as well. Within 

the Russian government there existed a desire to reclaim the former Soviet sphere of influence 

over former Soviet countries. When the “little green men,” armed and uniformed like Russian 

troops, occupied Crimea it seemed that Russia was acting on that desire by standing watch over 

the Crimean referendum. In his address to the world concerning the Crimean crisis, Vladimir 

Putin constantly stressed that the wishes of the people should be honored but also implied that 

Russia was the true owner of Sevastopol and Crimea proper from the beginning which leads us 

to believe that the conquest of eastern Ukraine is one of reclamation. In the military respects, the 

conflict in Ukraine is the culmination of lessons learned in previous wars. The war in 

Afghanistan taught the Soviet military how to wage war in difficult terrain and without 

helicopters. The Chechen wars reinstituted urban and positional warfare tactics as well as use of 

special forces along with a trend toward professional soldiers. And the Georgian war expands the 

scope of the conflict to outside a strict military definition. What the conflict in Ukraine adds is a 

layer of ambiguity, or what Mary Connell and Ryan Evans of the CNA Corporation calls the 

‘Gerasimov Doctrine’. They offer this definition “the term applies in situations in which a state 

or non-state belligerent actor deploys troops and proxies in a deceptive and confusing manner—

with the intent of achieving political and military effects while obscuring the belligerent’s direct 

participation.” With the well documented supply convoys originating within Russia and ending 

up at pro-Russian separatist camps, it is clear that Russia is participating in the conflict, yet 

denies any involvement even after many UN member states imposed sanctions on several 

members of the Russian government. As for the future evolution of the use of force, Connell and 

Evans make it clear that the Russian strategy components carefully planned and are specifically 

made to former Soviet states where ethnic Russians reside. It appears that the Gerasimov 

doctrine exists as a circumvention of the NATO treaty so that Russia may still pursue its 

immediate, regional foreign policy without directly drawing NATO into a war.  

  

Conclusion 

In conclusion, the evolution of use of Russian military force has gone through distinct 

periods of change. The War in Afghanistan forced the Soviet Union to learn how to fight 

unconventional and fourth generation wars, akin to the US experience in Vietnam. These lessons 

were then applied to the wars in Chechnya. Due to resistance within the ranks, a heavier 

emphasis was placed on professional soldiers and special operations forces, especially to run 

counterinsurgency missions. The War in Georgia expanded the scope of war beyond combat 

arms to include cyber and economic warfare. And finally, the conflict in Ukraine takes all of 

these lessons into account but places them under the Gerasimov Doctrine of Ambiguous 

Warfare. In terms of future conflicts, if previous conflicts may be used as a blueprint, the next 

targets of Russian military force will be former Soviet States suffering from political division.  

 

 



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Program in Arms Control & Domestic and International Security 

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References 

Alexiev, Alex. "The War in Afghanistan: Soviet Strategy and the State of the Resistance." 

Rand.org. November 1984. Accessed April 24, 2016. 

Coffey, Michael. "Military Learning Between the Chechen Wars." Sras.org. October 24, 2006. 

Accessed April 24, 2016. 

Cohen, Ariel, and Robert E. Hamilton. "The Russian Military and the Georgia War: Lessons and 

Implications." Strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil. June 2011. Accessed April 24, 2016. 

Collins, Joseph J. "The Use of Force in Soviet Foreign Policy: The Case of Afghanistan." 

Conflict Quarterly, 1983rd ser., Spring (1983): 20-27. Accessed April 24, 2016. 

Connell, Mary Ellen, and Ryan Evans. "Russia’s “Ambiguous Warfare” and Implications for the 

U.S. Marine Corps." Cna.org. May 2015. Accessed April 24, 2016. 

Felgenhauser, Pavel. "Russian Strategy in the Chechnya Wars." Bundesheer.at. Accessed April 

24, 2016.  

Herpen, Marcel Van. Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism. Lanham, MD: 

Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. P.239-244. 

Leff, Carol. “Chechen Wars.” Soviet & Post-Soviet Foreign Policy Lecture. Class lecture, 

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL. February 2016. 

Putin, Vladimir. "Address by President of the Russian Federation." Speech, The Kremlin, 

Moscow, April 24, 2016. 
 


