Russia may become serious threat to Ukraine in long run - ISW

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes about this.

Oleksiy Hromov, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff, said that Russian mobilization efforts are stagnating due to Russians’ growing awareness that causality rates for Russian soldiers in Ukraine are high. 

Also, according to him, Moscow is creating "alternative private military companies" (PMCs) to fill these gaps, but these PMCs will not be as powerful as the Wagner group in the near future.

"Ukraine and its allies must not underestimate Russian force generation capabilities in the long run for a protracted war of attrition as Russia can regenerate by leveraging its population and defense industrial base (DIB) to threaten Ukraine and NATO if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to fundamentally change Russia’s strategic resource allocation over the long run. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced plans on January 17 to form 12 new maneuver divisions over the course of several years," the report said.

Analysts emphasize that the Kremlin has not yet undertaken the necessary reorganization of its war effort. Current Russian half-measures and decentralized recruitment efforts to regenerate forces such as crypto-mobilization, leaning on Russia’s regions to generate volunteers, relying on new small PMCs, and pressuring various Russian state-owned enterprises to sponsor and pay for recruitment campaigns, need to be changed.

The Institute also notes that Russia cannot conduct large-scale offensive operations on several fronts simultaneously.

The experts cite as an example Hromov stated on April 13 that Russian forces deployed unspecified Russian forces from the Avdiivka area of operations to reinforce offensive operations around Bakhmut. 

At the same time, the brigadier general indicated that Russia has lost about 4,000 Wagner and conventional personnel in Bakhmut since around March 30.

"Hromov’s statement supports ISW’s longstanding assessment that the Russian military — in its current form — is unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes," ISW adds.

• Earlier, American analysts wrote that the Russian Defense Ministry used Wagner PMC mercenaries to take Bakhmut in order to minimize losses among the regular army.