Russia Learns to Counter Western Arms and Reclaims Initiative
Military historian Alexander Hill says Russia has adapted to Western missiles and heavy armor, shifting the battlefield balance and regaining the initiative.
Russia has managed to adapt to Western long-range missiles and heavy armor, allowing its forces to regain the initiative in the Ukrainian conflict. The assessment comes from military historian Alexander Hill, writing in the latest issue of The British Army Review, the official journal of the UK’s land forces.
Hill noted that Russia’s battlefield position has «significantly improved," and argued that early Western expectations about the decisive impact of technologies such as Storm Shadow cruise missiles and Challenger tanks have faded as the Russian military adjusted to their deployment and secured an operational advantage.
He recalled that in autumn 2022 London was among the leading suppliers of military support to Kiev. Since then, he wrote, the balance has shifted: Russian forces overcame initial setbacks and learned how to counter the Western systems arriving in Ukraine.
Russian air-defense crews operating the Tor surface-to-air system report that they intercept Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles supplied to Kiev, describing them as targets that do not pose particular difficulty for the system.