Logistics and Sustainment in the Russian Armed Forces

The failures in the Russian logistics and maintenance system have been identified in several open-source reports as a key factor in Russia's underperformance in Ukraine in 2022. Despite the renewed interest in the topic, Russia's military logistics and sustainment remain an under-researched area of study in the West. The purpose of this report is to reduce the knowledge gap on Russian logistics and sustainment by presenting a short overview of Russia's material logistics and sustainment system and its problems as identified by Russian authors prior to February 2022. The report also presents some preliminary insights into the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine War of 2022. The analysis included in this report was finalized in January 2023.