(LONDON) – A former British defence attaché has said that Russia’s armed forces remain weakened and constrained after four years of war in Ukraine, despite limited adaptation on the battlefield.
In an interview discussing the conflict, John Foreman, who previously served in Kyiv and Moscow, said Russia had fallen far short of its original military objectives since launching its full scale invasion in 2022.
Foreman, who spent decades as an officer in the British armed forces, said Russia’s early failures forced it to abandon its initial strategy and shift to a prolonged campaign in eastern and southern Ukraine.
He said the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had invested heavily in military reforms before the war, but that these efforts had failed, with consequences that continued to affect the armed forces.
“The performance has been abject,” Foreman said, referring to the gap between Moscow’s ambitions in 2022 and its current position.
He added that Western analysts often underestimated Russia’s capacity to adapt, noting that its forces had adjusted tactics, leadership structures, and production systems in response to Ukrainian defences.
Russia has also relied heavily on external support from China, Iran, and North Korea, he said, to sustain its war effort.
Foreman noted that Russian forces had made slow territorial gains, particularly in the Donbas region, but said these advances were costly and limited.
He said large parts of Russia’s military, including missile forces, naval units, and strategic aviation, had not been fully committed to the conflict, leaving an incomplete picture of overall capability.
However, he warned that battlefield adaptation did not mean Russia was becoming a modern, technologically advanced force.
“There are major obstacles to reform,” he said, including institutional conservatism, weak defence industry capacity, and political pressure to present the war as a success.
Foreman said military leaders faced difficulties challenging the Russian dictator’s narrative that the armed forces were close to victory.
“It is hard to tell the leader that the army needs complete rebuilding,” he said.
He also criticised the limited intellectual capacity within Russia’s defence establishment, saying the ongoing war consumed resources and attention that might otherwise be used for long term planning.
Russia’s current defence minister, Andrei Belousov, was appointed primarily to manage budgets and supply chains, rather than to lead strategic reform, Foreman said.
He added that Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov remained focused on implementation rather than innovation.
As a result, Foreman said, Russia was likely to retain a traditional, quantity based military model rather than develop a more flexible force.
While acknowledging improvements in drone warfare, targeting systems, and digital coordination, he said weaknesses persisted in logistics, medical services, infantry leadership, and aviation.
“These are bright spots in a very uneven picture,” he said.
Foreman cautioned against assuming that Russia could quickly rebuild and pose a major threat to NATO after the war, noting that its combined arms capabilities had performed poorly.
He said any meaningful reconstruction would take many years and would probably resemble past structures.
On Western militaries, Foreman said innovation often proceeded more slowly in peacetime, but argued that democratic systems could respond rapidly under pressure, as seen in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Turning to Ukraine, he said the country had gradually shifted from large scale offensives to a defensive strategy focused on inflicting maximum losses on Russian forces.
He said this transition had taken too long and was hindered by inadequate defensive preparations and organisational problems.
Despite these challenges, Foreman said Ukraine’s increasing lethality on the battlefield was making it harder for Russia to replace casualties.
Rising recruitment bonuses in Russia, he added, reflected mounting manpower pressures.
Foreman said Ukraine’s armed forces combined highly innovative civilian led initiatives with slower, bureaucratic structures inherited from the Soviet era.
He stressed that improved coordination, leadership, and knowledge sharing would be essential for Ukraine to sustain its resistance.
On diplomacy, he questioned whether current negotiations were producing real progress or amounted to “diplomatic theatre”.
He criticised the approach of US President Donald Trump to potential talks, describing it as flawed and disconnected from realities on the ground.
Foreman said Moscow was under growing economic and human strain but continued to delay meaningful negotiations.
He concluded that the most likely outcome in the near term was neither peace nor escalation, but a prolonged period of tension between Russia and the West.
