What Russia's Defeats in Ukraine Reveal about Why Russia Made War

CERS webinar with Richard Anderson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, UCLA; and Michael Mann, Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology, UCLA

Tuesday, January 10, 2023
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM (Pacific Time)

Russia's military ineffectiveness has been known inside the US government for forty-five years and has demonstrably worsened over time.

Image: "Abandoned Battle Tank" by Mikhail Volkov on Pexels.com

UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS) invites you to What Russia's Defeats in Ukraine Reveal about Why Russia Made War, a webinar by Richard Anderson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science. Michael Mann, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Sociology, UCLA, will join us as respondent. The event will take place online via a Zoom webinar on Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at 12pm (Pacific Time).

Abstract

In December 2021 US officials predicted a swift Russian victory over Ukraine, hoping only that guerilla warfare might exhaust Russia's determination to retain its conquests. Instead Russian forces soon withdrew from Kyiv, shifted the weight of their attack to the Donbas where they made slow progress with heavy losses, could make no further advances in the southwest beyond Kherson which they captured early, and then have been forced to retreat first in the northeast and then from Kherson itself. Russia's military ineffectiveness has been known inside the US government for forty-five years and has demonstrably worsened over time. Ineffectiveness is not attributable to any lack of military expertise but is rooted instead in the very practices that ensure the hold on power of the Russian regime personified--though not installed--by Vladimir Putin and that motivate its aggression against Ukraine.

Speaker

Richard Anderson is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, having published widely on Soviet and Russian politics. Before joining the faculty in 1989, he had been an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, where he wrote a later declassified study of the Soviet military's problems of morale and unit cohesion that have worsened in the Russian army. He then joined the staff of the then House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he observed the Soviet army's failings in the Afghan war and its inability to mobilize its reserves for the planned suppression of Poland's Solidarity movement. In that capacity he also took part in converting the US Army and Marines to maneuver warfare, which the California National Guard has since taught to the Ukrainian armed forces.

Photograph of Richard Anderson by Catherine Valeriote

Respondent

Michael Mann is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology, UCLA and one of the world’s eminent social historians. He has a BA and D.Phil. from Oxford University, and has been awarded three honorary doctorates (Hon.D.Litts.) from McGill University, Montreal, University College, Dublin, and The University of the Aegean. After graduating from Oxford he worked at Cambridge University, The University of Essex, the London School of Economics, and (from 1987), the University of California at Los Angeles. He was Visiting Research Professor at The Queens University, Belfast, during 2003-2007, and in 2004-2005 he was the Visiting Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University. In 2008 he was awarded an Honorary Professorship at Cambridge. In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of both the American and British Academies. His major publication project is the four volume The Sources of Social Power, all published by Cambridge University Press. Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to 1760 (1986), Volume II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760 -1914 (1993), Volume III: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890-1945 (2012), and Volume IV: Globalizations, 1945 -2012 (2013). His latest book, On Wars, is coming out with Yale University Press in July 2023.