Russian Forecasting and Pre-emption: The Prelude to the Invasion of Ukraine

This article draws on the available Russian unclassified military academic literature to offer an account of the Russian threat perception, and the countermeasures instituted in response, that led to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. While perhaps surprising to many, Russian threat perception in the period from the late 2000s to 2022 focused on a perceived threat of hybrid warfare from the West. From a Russian perspective, the “Arab Spring” and “color revolutions” in the post-Soviet space were instigated and designed by the West as part of a campaign aimed at subverting and overturning governments opposed to it. This threat perception arises from a peculiar approach to strategy that involves monitoring and forecasting the international situation in order to identify trends and scenarios which might lead to future threats to the national security of the Russian Federation. As this article will demonstrate, Russian countermeasures evolved into a strategy of “active defense” involving the pre-emptive use of so-called interdepartmental groups of forces outside the borders of the Russian Federation. The Russian forces invading Ukraine in 2022 was part of this “active defense”.