Messaging of the Expanded Meeting of the Russian Defence Ministry Board

Russian president attended this meeting against the backdrop of cancelled traditional presidential addresses to the nation and discussions about the state of the Federation.

Why?

Vladimir Putin is positioning himself as a wartime leader, therefore, he amended his public appearances to a war-like position.

At the current juncture, President and MoD are under heavy criticism for their incapability to win the war. We witness that the most internally destabilising dynamic has become the “moderate” tactics, and critics have been pushing decision-makers into more hard-line strategies, which materialised in mobilisation and the ongoing brutal aerial campaign.

The Russian military has been criticised for disastrous logistics, obsolete training methods and monstrous bureaucracy. On the wave of criticism, the Wagner Group has shown a more agile approach, and Yevgenij Prigozhin has improved its position within the Russian ruling cluster.

The main messages

First and foremost, the watchful observers of Russian military bloggers’ criticism can conclude that the meeting appeared as damage control after 300 days of failures. The Minister of Defense and President tried to address all criticism in their speeches. On top of that, Putin spoke about the need to address criticism with patience and in contemporary ways.

Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu and President Putin spoke about necessary reforms to get rid of bureaucracy, improve the military ranking system, and unlimited budget for the military that underwent substantial reforms in the past ten years and was receiving more than 4 % of Russian GDP every year.

President and Minister addressed the needs of the Russian military-industrial complex; they both spoke about advanced weaponry and how they will meet the demands of the military(another point of critics).

I found particularly interesting the part of Putin´s speech about the production of unmanned aerial vehicles and the Russian capabilities to produce unique unmanned aircraft, especially in light of the recent Royal United Services Institute report that found out that „Russia has significantly increased imports of ... components, which are critical both to Russia’s plans to expand UAV production and its ongoing operations in Ukraine, are being shipped to Russia by a variety of distributors based in the United States, Europe, China, South Korea and Hong Kong.“ (read more here https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/orlan-complex-tracking-supply-chains-russias-most-successful-uav)

Russian officials mentioned that 150 thousand out of 290 mobilised are currently practising at polygons around Russia, while the Minister of defence revealed plans to meet more than 690 thousand mobilised. On this account - the new wave of mobilisation is likely to result in a new wave of emigration from Russia.

Amid criticism of undersupplied units, the president promised an unlimited military budget for 2023. The Federal budget approved for 2023 accounts for significant surges in military spending to more than $82,9 bn for defence and $69,4 bn for law enforcement and homeland security (including annexed regions). Altogether it is approximately 40 % more than the initial plan. With many statistics, such as international trade stats, in Russia being banned, it is safe to assume that Russia is preparing for a prolongated conflict and has entered the war economy.

Nevertheless, it remains unclear how they plan to sustain this pace of spending against the backdrop of tightening sanctions regime against Russia. On the other hand, it is unlikely that economic issues will impact Russian operational goals in 2023.

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