New RUSI report on preliminary lessons from Russia's unconventional warfare (mostly intelligence service led operations) in Ukraine. Authors "have in many instances checked the conclusions with non-Ukrainian agencies", it says.
https://static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unconventional-Operations-Russo-Ukrainian-War-web-final.pdf.pdf
"in the autumn of 2021 Russian agents in Ukraine began to go on brief holidays at short notice to resorts in Turkey, Cyprus and Egypt where, coincidentally, they would meet with their handlers."
"the Russian Orthodox Church...Beyond its efforts to support Russian information operations, its priests were widely recruited and run by the Russian special services and their monasteries and churches used as safe houses for equipment and personnel."
"Russia’s belief that it understood Ukrainian politics may have been bolstered by the number of senior former Ukrainian officials resident in Moscow who had a clear motive in telling the Kremlin to proceed."
Agent network fragility: "the full-scale invasion fundamentally altered the context within which their unwitting agents or agents recruited under false flags who lacked any ideological commitment...were judging the harms of operating under Russian control"
"A large portion of the middle echelon of [Ukrainian] officials that were Russian agents simply stopped responding to [Russian] messages early in the invasion or else abandoned their posts, severing chains of command"
Clever info ops. "the Russians started messages on Ukrainian social media calling for citizens to report suspicious markings on buildings. The result was a deluge of false positives swamping the capacity of Ukrainian law enforcement."
"One of the foremost causes of inaccuracy in pre-war military assessments of the likely trajectory of the fighting – both in NATO countries & in the Ukrainian mil.– stems from the assumption that the Ru forces would conduct a deliberate military offensive"
"relatively small level of infiltration & sabotage against military sites attempted in the opening phase [per] Russian doctrine...Instead most Spetsnaz deployed in conventional reconnaissance roles ahead of the [BTGs] while special forces were largely intended to sweep in behind"
"The Russians were so confident that they would succeed in hours that their support apparatus had rented apartments around the key sites from which their special forces were supposed to operate in Kyiv"
"The population was divided into five core categories". Number one was "Those deemed leaders of Ukrainian nationalism who were specified for physical liquidation on a high-priority target list, or for capture to enable show trials."
"fact that layout of these facilities is consistent throughout the country & the equipment used in torture chambers incl specialised electrocution machines were same across multiple oblasts demonstrates this was a systematic plan & not improvised sadism."
"Of the 800 Russian agents identified in the occupied parts of Kharkiv oblast...majority were junior officials in local government including in departments such as the forestry commission. Fewer than 100 local law enforcement officers collaborated."
"Based on its experiences in Chechnya, [Rus] planning assumption was that 8% of the population needed to collaborate, whether proactively or under coercion, to enable the counterintelligence regime to be effective". Ukr assessed "FSB was broadly correct"
The digitised gulag archipelago. "By the time these datasets reached the TOG at the oblast level, there is evidence that data was ingested into ‘Spectrum’. Spectrum is the FSB’s digital architecture for its security and counterintelligence work..."
Collective punishment. "Even in...areas [w/] no strikes...acts of resistance wd often lead to apparently random people being lifted for interrogation in numbers. In some communities this essentially led many residents not to go out except for essentials"
SF cannibalising regular infantry. "the expansion of Spetsnaz units had contributed to a shortage of competent contract infantry for the wider Russian military – as most competent infantry had been pushed toward Spetsnaz and airborne units."
Prigozhin: GRU's conduit to Putin. "the GRU has often routed political recommendations to Putin through Prigozhyn rather than its own official chain of command. Instead, it would be fairer to say that the GRU and Wagner are strongly intertwined."
"Despite transcending the GRU’s chain of command, the supply of weapons and military equipment to Wagner is carried out by the structures of the [Russian MoD] through the 78th Special Reconnaissance Centre and the 22nd Special Forces Brigade of the GRU"
"the persistent [HUMINT] network held together by the resistance movement has been critical to the accurate targeting of Russian command & control and logistics infrastructure using long-range precision fires" [though Ukr has incentive to mislead here]
"details of how the resistance movement is run is clearly operationally sensitive...skills...are primarily those of [HUMINT] handling & covert communications and...personnel best suited to this activity are mainly drawn from the special services"
Goodbye Salisbury, hello Kherson. "some officers of [GRU's] Unit 29155, who were exposed and can no longer be used undercover, are now involved in remote recruitment and management of agent networks on the territory of Ukraine"
"fact that [GRU] have consistently found targets and have the means to strike them means that how to identify & break up these human reconnaissance networks is a key question for the rear area security of NATO conventional forces in the event of conflict."
"Although crude and violent – having a terrible effect on the economy and quality of life in targeted areas – [Ru repression] does appear to be an effective method of constraining resistance activities to a manageable level and maintaining control."
"For NATO forces ... partnered resistance operations need to be calibrated towards reconnaissance rather than direct action...Those interfacing with these networks need to prioritise skills in handling human agents and in covert communications"
"there appears to be a systemic problem [in Russian intel services] of overreporting one’s successes and concealing weaknesses to superiors." See my piece from October on this:
https://www.economist.com/europe/20...-has-battered-the-reputation-of-russian-spies
Deterring the deluded: "this lack of self-awareness in the Russian services...is far from comforting as it leads to a situation in which the Russians are difficult to deter because they have an unrealistic estimation of the likelihood of their success."
"once a particular [Russian] form or method is exposed it tends to have been widely replicated allowing for the rapid detection of a wide range of unconnected activities. The Russian system does not appear to encourage treating each operation as bespoke."
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