At first glance, Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine seemed to suggest a change in the approach of the Russian armed forces.
Moscow was perhaps calculating that missile strikes and a multipronged invasion of ground forces would lead to a swift surrender by the Ukrainian government. Putin appears to have anticipated a repeat of Russia’s decisive seizure of Crimea in 2014 or its invasion of Georgia in 2008 – but what we have seen is more similar to its intervention in Chechnya in December 1994 when the Russian armed forces were initially unable to convert their military superiority (certainly in terms of numbers) into military and strategic success, and thousands of Russian troops proved unable to secure the North Caucasian republic.
