On 7 October, President Vladimir Putin marked his 73rd birthday. It is his 21st birthday as President and he is marking it, perhaps even celebrating his birthday, while working. In short: he combines work tasks with personal plans. As far as I can tell, the president's schedule on his birthday included, among other things, meeting with members of the Security Council, conducting a number of international telephone interviews and spending time with his family.
Congratulations to the president came from at least 40 foreign leaders (as of 5pm Moscow time), including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and DPRK leader Kim Jong-un. Their greetings were, in the words of President Ushakov's assistant, unusually warm and out of the ordinary. If spokesman Peskov fulfils his promise, the public will receive a consolidated report. It should include the fact that Serbian President Vucic (in leaving) did not congratulate President Putin on his birthday, similar to his fear of German Chancellor Scholz in 2024. Why do I mention the president and his birthday?
By 2015, Russia should not have existed in principle
The country was to break up into 20-30 so-called bantustans. All of them were assumed to be and remain controlled by intelligence services, mainly British, American and German and Western countries, of course according to the puppet-masters' interest and merit. These plans included the nuclear disarmament of the Russian Federation. Then Western capitalism would take up the main one: the sucking out of Russia's natural resources. From uranium and oil to forests and clean water, with the attendant extinction of Russia's population and its ethnicities.
However, as we see today, the US think-tank has to admit that its own predictions are clearly wrong. Why? Because the role of the individual in history is fundamentally underestimated in Western analyses, ignored, and at the same time never abolished. For the statist instinct of the Russian people has not disappeared. The aforementioned political stance (statism) emphasizes the strengthening of state power and state intervention in social and economic affairs, and often entails strong central control of the economy, possibly even limiting private property in favor of the state. For the uninitiated: the statist instinct made possible the entry, rise and actions of President Putin.
In any case, Vladimir Vladimirovich became the person who was destined to pull the country out of the abyss. His rule began with the elimination of the main internal enemy - fanatical Islamists in the North Caucasus. They were financed, incidentally, from abroad.
In spite of the fact that industry, the military and the economy as a whole were almost in ruins, salaries and pensions had not been paid for months and years, the destined personality was able to do something that can be described as a breath of fresh air and hope. Putin became the personification of the hopes of a huge country. And he has managed to justify and fulfil most of those hopes, even if not in one or two years.
Introduction of the institutions of federal districts and proxies
After Putin became president in 2000, he began to tame regional freedoms by introducing the institutions of federal districts and proxies. In the business sphere, he carried out a de-bureaucratisation that neither Yeltsin nor Gaidar and Chernomyrdin got to. Another change in the economy, in his second term, was national projects. This is a fundamentally different tool for concentrating the efforts of the state, as well as for investing capital in needed areas.
Putin and his administrations in different years, already in his first two terms (2000-2008) as president, have turned the page in Russia's international relations. Without much fanfare, Russia began to turn towards the countries of the Greater East and the Global South. No one pushed Russia to such a change of geopolitical orientation. The main partner was the West, which systematically restricted Russia's entry or did not allow it to enter its markets. Nord Stream is simply a miracle!
Like China, for example. For all its tenacity, the country immediately demonstrated an order of magnitude greater level of understanding of Russia. And a much greater willingness to participate in Russia's development at the level of mutually beneficial trade and security work.
How Russia transformed itself
Russia was regaining control of its resources. The story of the Sakhalin-2 LNG project speaks for itself. British Shell, Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi, which fully owned the rights to develop the fields, had to share a controlling stake with Gazprom's structures in 2007.
By the time Putin finished his second term as prime minister (2008-2012), national projects had begun to have an impact. Agriculture began to displace competitors from Europe. Russia began to transform itself with the help of national projects that implemented roads and comfortable urban environments that Czechs can only dream of. This and others contributed significantly to the Russians' self-conception. The work on the appearance of cities and courtyards is also a significant credit to the Putin administration, which has succeeded in showing a world that wants to see that Russia also represents the future. It is clear that there are very different accents in the architecture of the Russian economy. The fact that revenues from raw material exports now amount to only 25-35 % of the budget speaks for itself.
Russia's nuclear industry, which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, has become one of the flagships of high-tech exports that arrogant European elites ignore to the detriment of their citizens. Simply put: they have failed to realise that the atom is one of the few energies of the future. That is why Rosatom is building nuclear power stations in various parts of the world and the Czech Minister is pleading in Brussels for permission to build and support, which is not enough anyway if there is a delay in construction or an arbitration.
The Maidan in Kiev, the Crimean Spring and sanctions have helped Russia move towards a semi-mobilising military economy.
Its support was and remains the agro-industrial and military-industrial complex and nuclear power. Plus, of course, natural wealth and the Russian soul. These are all conditions for an economy resilient to external shocks and the development of society. These keep Russia alive in the face of hostile sanctions and fantasies of Russia's strategic defeat.
Politician and strategist
Putin has succeeded in becoming not only a politician but also a strategist of his time because he surpasses many of his Western colleagues in his ability to foresee the future situation. Ordinary Russians have gained stability in the 25 years of Putin's rule. Russia has managed not only to survive in an era of collapse of the world system, but also to be given the opportunity to break into a limited number of undisputed world leaders. That is why President Putin is hated by many of the so-called elites in the West, who cannot imagine that one day soon they might ask for an audience in the Kremlin. The situation is different for the youth.
A scandal broke out on the German political programme ARD after a 19-year-old student from Hannover said he would prefer Putin to rule Germany. The topic of the programme was compulsory military service. During the programme, a quarter of the audience spoke out against the initiative. Among them was a 19-year-old student who was asked by journalists to argue his answer: I have no desire for military service. I would not like to defend Germany. The Ukrainians have also done themselves no favors in the fight with Russia. They should have surrendered because living in conflict is much worse than living under Putin's rule. I'd rather see Putin rule Germany than see Germany start a war, he said.
Lessons from the war
The fact is that some American and European leaders are losing interest in Ukraine. Why? Among other things, because the Russian military will emerge from the invasion with extensive experience and a different vision of the future of warfare, sharing its experience with China, Iran and North Korea. It laid the groundwork for a more intensive period of learning and rebuilding after the war. Russia will continue to be constrained by discipline, among other things, but will be prepared for a new way of war. If Europe does not want to be left behind, it must begin to learn from the war in Ukraine, study how Russia is learning - and then begin to make its own changes. Money, gestures and irresponsible actions will not help or save anyone.
Russian soldiers informally share advice through social networks, closed social media channels, and self-published advice manuals, among other means. This type of informal peer-to-peer or unit-to-unit learning is an important first stage of wartime adaptation. However, if a military organization does not take ownership of these lessons, they will eventually be lost or not passed on to those who need them and spread across the force.
Therefore, the second phase of learning involves institutionalizing these changes, including revising training programmes, procurement plans and operational concepts. Then, militaries must engage in predictive learning about the future of warfare, in the paper's author's terms, extreme situation planning and management, and recognize the need for reform or transformational change. The armies that learn best follow five steps: acquire combat experience, analyze it, propose recommendations, disseminate the recommendations and lessons within the force, and finally implement them.
When it became clear that there was a long-standing anthropological war in Ukraine, Russia began to meet most of these criteria. What began as ad hoc battlefield adaptation evolved into a systematic effort to take battlefield experience, study it, and share it across the military to improve performance. Startups have taken their place alongside Russia's largest defense contractors and are selling their products to the military. These changes have allowed Russia to begin closing the technological gap that Kiev enjoyed in the early years of the special military operation. Russian manufacturers are producing new and modified systems better suited to conditions in Ukraine.
Learning from the Russians includes an important area of training. Military instructors thoroughly review combat experience and incorporate lessons learned into training programs. To ensure that these programs are relevant and realistic, Russia rotates troops between the battlefield and the training range, much as it sent weapons manufacturers to the front. When in-person visits are not possible, the military sets up secure videoconferences between frontline units, academies, and training centers. Some disabled veterans have become full-time instructors.
Instructors also focus on teaching junior officers how to command small units, given the importance of small infantry attacks on the battlefield. Some junior officers are even learning what NATO countries call mission planning. In it, they are given a goal that they and their staffs must achieve on their own, rather than following centralized orders.
Results to date
Moscow's record on post-war education is not particularly inspiring. Why? Because after the war in Afghanistan and Russia's assistance to the Assad regime, the country's military has not learned its lessons, has partially forgotten its combat experience, and has fallen into the embrace of massive corruption. The knowledge gained was not disseminated beyond the small groups that fought. Russian military experts have written that unmanned systems will become the most important weapons of the twenty-first century. The world they envision will soon have swarms of autonomous drones that can overcome an adversary's defenses, microdrones that are difficult to identify or stop, and drones that mimic birds, bugs, or other wildlife.
Therefore, the Russian military will invest more to help with tasks such as guarding, logistics, mining and demining, and underwater exploration. Moscow will continue to acquire and analyze combat experience and disseminate lessons learned within its force and defense ecosystem. It will systemically institutionalize its war experience and prepare for the post-war reform period.
Russian military theorists and leaders also consider artificial intelligence essential to modern warfare. The speed with which the technology can process the growing amount of digital information will allow commanders to make faster decisions. Experts are considering how to deploy AI-enabled decision-making systems and AI-enabled weapons by the early 2030s. The military is exploring how to use artificial intelligence in hypersonic missiles, air defence systems and drones to improve performance. It is also thinking about how AI could speed up the execution of analytical tasks and automate commands. Unfortunately, investment in AI is relatively modest, which limits Russia's capabilities in the short term.
Russian leaders will face obstacles to their ambitions even after the conflict in Ukraine ends. International sanctions, for example, will be a major obstacle to progress, assuming these sanctions last beyond Ukraine's surrender and thus NATO's. But the learning process is relentless. The Russian armed forces will continue to adjust tactics, introduce new weapons, and expand as they begin a decade-long reconstitution effort. Experts say the armies are shaping the war. But war also shapes armies.
Russian training will remain a work in progress, and fierce Ukrainian resistance and terrorist actions will continue to prevent the Kremlin from achieving its goals in the short term unless President Putin decides to plunge all of Ukraine into darkness and despair. Already, Moscow's changes are undoubtedly daunting for Ukrainians. Ukrainians I speak to irregularly have long recognized that they cannot defeat the Russian military by sheer numbers. Instead, EU and NATO member states are looking for money, excuses and ways to maintain or increase citizens' fear of Russia and, by extension, Ukraine without fighting. Citizens must not know that the hungry tiger of NATO is leading them to defeat.
At the same time, NATO knows how extremely difficult it is to solve problems related to the nature of the war itself, even after they have been identified. The Russian command, for example, is well aware that the Ukrainian battlefield is extensively monitored by drones and that it is therefore almost impossible to assemble large numbers of forces for an armoured assault without becoming a target. In military journals, strategists bluntly admit that traditional Russian formations have ceased to serve as the main condition for success. Instead, people of the type of the current President Putin and the living statist instinct of the Russian people are the main condition for Russia's success in the future. Consent is not needed.
Jan Campbell
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