In the year of 2014 Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Eight years later, Russia escalated the war by carrying out a full-scale military invasion on the rest of Ukraine. Since then, the Russo-Ukrainian war have turned out to become a war of the military-industrial capacities between the west and Russia. Because of this, Russian military logistics is of vital interest to western scholars, professionals and the broader public, but the topic is unfortunately not easily understood.
The purpose of this paper is in general to contribute to the broader research on military logistics and specifically to contribute to the understanding of Russian military logistics. This is done by conducting a case study on the operational logistics of the Russian Armed Forces in the Russo-Ukrainian war. This is achieved by using the theories of Moshe Kress on operational logistics as analytical framework. The method used is a qualitative text analysis.
The results show that the logistics system of the Russian Armed Forces have the ability to improvise logistics proceedings and prioritize resources and partially have the ability to achieve stability in the logistic flow and to push the right quantity of supplies into the theatre of operations. In addition, the logistics system does not have the ability to decide on the “tooth-to-tail” ratio, and lastly, the Russian Armed Forces does not have the ability to protect its logistics system.