Russian Military Thinking

The Nordic Countries and Ukraine

Soviet Lieutenant General Vladimir Cheremnikh responsible for military planning for Northern Europe and the U.S. Navy Intelligence Chief for Europe Robert Bathurst in Stockholm, summer 1995 before the recording of the Swedish tv-program (Photo: Private archive).

[A shorter version of this article was published in the Swedish internet magazine Parabol on 1 June 2024. An early article bringing up similar issues was published on 4 March 2024 in the Norwegian magazine Nordnorsk debatt (belonging to the newspaper Nordlys). In the Nordic countries, the understanding of the Russian military thinking is of special significance because of the new DCA agreement, which gives the United States a significant presence on military bases in the Nordic countries.]

For Russia, the invasion of Ukraine was not about conquering land or subjugating a people, not about re-establishing the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire, but about establishing “a neutral buffer zone” to guarantee Russia’s existence as a state. For Russia, it is vital to have a buffer zone to guarantee its survival. The same problem applies to Northern Europe. During the Cold War, the Nordic countries served as a zone of détente, as a buffer zone, because Sweden and Finland were more or less neutral, while Norway as a member of NATO did not allow for U.S. bases on its territory. With NATO membership and the new Defense Cooperation Agreements (DCA) between the United States and the Nordic countries, we are now risking a military confrontation.

The United States has traditionally been thinking in terms of “containment”, to “contain” the Soviet Union and later Russia from any form of expansion. The U.S. moved forces close to the enemy’s border as a tripwire to trigger the mobilization of a larger military force when attacked, but as shown in the RAND report on Norway, “Enhancing Deterrence and Defense on NATO’s Northern Flank” (2020), the United States wanted to deploy missiles and aircraft fairly close to Russia to be able to attack vital facilities deep inside Russian territory to give Norway and NATO a “credible deterrent”. This would make them able “deter” Russia from attacking Norway, RAND argues. But this argument pre-supposes that Russia wants to expand its territory.

This allegedly defensive “containment” argument has, however, always been supplemented by a U.S. “roll-back” strategy, which sought to push the Soviets or Russia back step by step. This was CIA Director Allan Dulles’ policy in the 1950s. But the same offensive “roll-back thinking” was favored in the 1980s by the U.S. “Victory School”, by Dulles’ OSS colleague, then CIA Director William Casey, and in the 1990s by the neoconservative United States with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, but also by President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. They wanted to place the United States “between Germany and Russia in Central Europe” and even go into the Soviet Union itself. Cheney wanted, to quote CIA Director and later Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “to see the dismantlement not only the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire but of Russia itself”. Cheney wanted to push Russia back to Moscow.

While American security analysts thinks in terms of “deterrence”, “containment” and “roll-back”, Russian analysts thinks in terms of “buffer zones” and to strike hard, if necessary. One thinks in terms of having a necessary defensive depth to protect Russia’s vital interests. This Russian thinking has been formed by centuries of Western attacks on Russia from Charles XII in the 18^th century and Napoleon in the 19^th century to Nazi Germany in the 20^th century, all of which went deep into Russia. All these attacks were defeated, but more than 25 million Russians died in World War II. Cold War Central Europe with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary was not part of an empire in our sense. Rather, they should be understood as a controlled buffer zone to prevent the war from being fought once again on Russian soil with losses of tens of millions of Russian lives. This was certainly not the choice of the Poles, the Czechs and the Hungarians, and from late 1988, President Mikhail Gorbachev sought to replace the Warsaw Pact states with a neutral buffer zone of independent states, something that all Western leaders had agreed to in 1990-91. If Moscow withdrew its 350,000 men from East Germany, there would be no expansion of NATO into Central Europe and not even to East Germany, they all promised.

In the summer of 1992, my colleague Robert Bathurst and I, together with American military historians, traveled to Russia. Almost all of the participants were from U.S. intelligence agencies. Robert had been an interpreter between President Eisenhower and Khrushchev, in charge of the Washington-Moscow hotline, a U.S. Deputy Attaché in Moscow, and head of U.S. Naval Intelligence Europe. In Leningrad/St. Petersburg (the city was just about to change its name), we spoke with Vladimir Cheremnikh, who in the late 1970s and 1980s was the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Leningrad Military District and responsible for planning the military attack on Northern Europe that would have been launched in the event of a major US-Soviet war.

We invited him to Oslo to present his experience as the Soviet Commander-in-Chief in Afghanistan for a year (1981-82) and his experience as chief of the military planning for Northern Europe in late 1970s and in early and mid-1980s. Former Norwegian Chief of Defense, General Fredrik Bull-Hansen, and his Chief of Intelligence, Jan Ingebrigtsen also participated at the seminars. Lieutenant General Cheremnikh said that in the event of a Western attack on the Soviet Union, the Soviet forces in Leningrad, Petrozavodsk and Kandalaksha would occupy Finland and possibly also the northernmost tip of Sweden, while the forces in Murmansk would take the county of Finnmark in northeastern Norway. Bodø and other air bases in northern Norway were to be knocked out.

When I asked Cheremnikh what would have happened if the United States had used Swedish air bases, he replied that they in that case would also have been destroyed, but the Russians were not going to occupy Sweden. “Taking Sweden was not necessary”, he said. But we know that the Soviets at that time would not be able to knock out these air bases with conventional aerial bombing. Such attacks would have required continuous bombing, and the Russian losses of aircraft would in that case have been unacceptable. They would rather and most likely have used nuclear weapons. (In 2008, former Swedish Supreme Commander, General Bengt Gustafsson, published a document from the Swedish intelligence service MUST on the Soviet plans for an attack on Northern Europe on the website of the Washington-Zurich based “Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact”. The document presented a conversation with General Cheremnikh, but it turned out that I was the one who had written the document. I had given it to the Swedish defence attaché in Oslo, and it had then been presented as a MUST document. I had already published the information from this document in a book from 1995.

Sweden's Defense Minister Sven Andersson (1957-73) had a secret agreement with the United States to receive American aircraft at Swedish air bases from the very first day of the war before Sweden had been attacked by the Soviets. In case of a war on the Central Front, the U.S. aircraft in West Germany would have to have somewhere to go and Sweden was the best option for the U.S. Air Force. Swedish airbases would have received the U.S. aircraft already before a possible Soviet attack on Sweden. This I was told by Andersson’s close advisor Ingemar Engman and this understanding was also confirmed by former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger at a conference in 1993. After my question about his understanding of Sweden, he spoke about “Two Sweden”, Sweden as a Dual State, where “the Military Sweden was planning for us to come as soon as possible”, in other words before a Soviet attack on Sweden. The “Political Sweden” with Prime Minister Olof Palme (1969–76; 1982–86) did not accept this policy. He did not hand over this Swedish agreement of receiving U.S. aircraft from “day one” to the new Prime Minister, Thorbjorn Fälldin, in 1976. Palme must have understood that the U.S. use of Swedish air bases in an early phase of a war would make Sweden a target for Soviet missiles with nuclear weapons.

Russian thinking was based on two types of buffer zones, an “inner zone” of control and an “outer zone” of denial, where the Russians would deny U.S. or Western forces. (Cf. the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when the U.S.-Russian relations were turned around. The U.S. denied the Soviets the right to have missiles in Cuba). This is in fact a parallel to the U.S. thinking about how to operate U.S. aircraft carriers. The carriers always had to establish an inner zone of “Sea Control” with their own air defense systems, where the U.S. Navy could operate its own surface vessels: for example, two cruisers, two destroyers and a frigate. Outside this zone, one would establish a zone of “Sea Denial”, where the submarines of the Carrier Battle Group and the carrier-based aircraft will deny the other party the right and ability to operate. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the U.S. thinking about the Maritime Strategy in the 1980s including the use of Carrier Battle Groups in Northern Waters.

Russian military thinking is based on the same idea: an “inner zone of control” and an “outer zone of denial”. According to the Finnish-Soviet “Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance of 1948”, Finland would not allow forces from the United States and other Western countries to use Finnish territory or airspace, as this would threaten the Soviet Union. Cheremnikh said: “We had an agreement with the Finns, but we didn’t trust them”. Finland and Finnmark belonged to the “inner zone” that the Russians would have to control to survive, while they would deny the Americans the ability to operate from the “outer zone” (Sweden and Norway in general). They would knock out U.S. bases. There is reason to assume that Russian planning is the same today. The geography has not changed.

The Russian elite is not interested in conquering foreign territory or to rule over other peoples. The experience of Poland and Afghanistan in the 1980s or earlier in Czechoslovakia says it all. Today’s generation of political leaders in Moscow is well aware that to control the territory of others in peacetime is not possible without unacceptable costs. There are, of course, Russian officers who may dream of a Greater Russia, just like some Swedish officers who may dream about the greatness of the 17^th century Sweden. But that has nothing to do with practical politics. For Russia, the invasion of Ukraine is not about conquering a country or subjugating another people, but about having a buffer zone when the existence of the Russian state is threatened.

But what about the Russian minorities of the post-Soviet states? Together with Russia, they have come to be known as the “Russian World” or “Russkiy Mir”. Does Russia not feel a special responsibility for these Russian-speaking areas outside Russia? Yes, in a sense, but despite Kyiv's shelling of the Russian-speaking Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine from 2014 with thousands of dead civilians and despite the fact that the “new republics”, Donetsk and Lugansk, begged for recognition as part of Russia, Vladimir Putin denied them this. For Putin, the idea of the “Russian world” was subordinated to the UN Charter’s claim about the sovereignty of states. Perhaps Putin also wanted to make sure that the Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine would not be reduced to a minority that would be dominated by the radical nationalists in Western Ukraine. In the case of Crimea, the situation is different. Already in 1991 before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, 93% of the population of Crimea voted in favor of belonging to Russia, not to Ukraine, and Russia would never cede the Sevastopol Naval Base to the United States. The problem for Crimea was that in 1991 Boris Yeltsin was more concerned with seizing power in Moscow and outmaneuvering Mikhail Gorbachev than with limiting the risks of a future war.

A further piece of evidence for Vladimir Putin’s acceptance of the existing post-Soviet Russia, is the fact that he was happy with the Minsk agreements of 2015. It provided a guarantee of a “neutral Ukraine” and a guarantee that the Russian-speaking population of the East would be allowed to speak Russian. However, when the Ukraine Parliament from 2019 declared that it would join NATO (in conflict with the Minsk agreement) and at the same time began a buildup of forces along the border to Donetsk and Lugansk, and after that from mid-February 2022 started to shell the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk massively in preparation for an offensive, Moscow saw this as a declaration of war. During the negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022, Russia demanded, a “neutral Ukraine”, the head of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arakhamia, said, and he continued: “In fact, this was the key point [for the Russians]. Everything else [was] cosmetic”. The negotiations were a “success”, said President Zelenskyy's military adviser in the delegation, Oleksiy Arestovych. “We opened the champagne bottle. It was completely successful negotiations”, he said. However, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson went to Kyiv, and said, to quote Arakhamia: “We should not sign anything with them at all, and let's just fight”. Johnson told Kyiv not to agree to anything from Russia. If the British had not intervened, we could have had a neutral Ukraine today and avoided the continuation of the war with half a million dead Ukrainians.

From the first day of the invasion, the mass media assumed that Russia wanted to conquer Ukraine, but then failed. According to a Western rule of thumb, however, an occupation would have required at least a five times as large force: it would require one soldier for every 40-50 inhabitants, and if you look at Russian experience, you can almost certainly say that they would have used a force 10 times as large (cf. Czechoslovakia 1968). In short, by using a relatively small force in February 2022, Russia signaled to the West that it had no intention of occupying Ukraine. This was also clear from what Arakhamia and Arestovych had said above about the negotiations in March-April 2022. Russia wanted “a neutral Ukraine”. One had no intention of conquering the country, but one would by all means deny Western military presence in Ukraine. The Russian military intervention was not about conquering territory, but about preventing Ukraine from turning into a U.S. bastion 500 km from Moscow. Russia wanted a neutral zone, a buffer zone, which would reduce the risk of a Western surprise attack, because such an attack would have been impossible for Russia to defend against.

“Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain”, Vladimir Putin said in 2000. On the day of the invasion on 24 February 2022 he said: “We have been treating all new post-Soviet states with respect […]. Russia respects the sovereignty of all post-Soviet states, and we respect and will respect their sovereignty. […] It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory”. But Russia cannot accept a “[Western] threat from the territory of today’s Ukraine”. Large parts of Ukraine will, in a major war, fall within an “inner zone of control”, while the rest will fall within the “outer zone of denial”, where the adversary is to be denied the buildup of its forces. For Russia, it is not about restoring the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, but about guaranteeing a buffer zone to deny the United States a military presence. And if this cannot be achieved through negotiations, then Russia is willing to guarantee such a buffer zone by the use of military force.

In a major European war, the problem for the Russian neighbours is whether they will end up in the “inner zone of control” or the “outer zone of denial”? The former are in danger of being occupied, while the latter are in danger of having their air bases knocked out by missiles if they have received U.S. or British air forces. The Russian side will, as far as possible, use conventional weapons, but if a war already has passed the nuclear threshold, nuclear weapons will probably be used.

According to Russian plans for a major war, Russia will not use of ground forces to enter Sweden or Norway west of Finnmark, but U.S. air bases and other significant U.S. installations will be knocked out by Russian hypersonic missiles. Russian missile technology has developed rapidly in recent years. Today, our air defense system cannot take out many of these missiles. While the U.S. thinks in terms of basing aircraft and missiles near Russian territory to “deter” the Russians from “adventures”, the Russians think in terms of U.S. planning for an attack on Russia and of the necessity of pre-empting such an attack by striking first. Any forward deployment of U.S. aircraft or missiles is accordingly extremely destabilizing.

For the countries in the “inner zone”, it is most important to ensure détente in order to prevent a war. After Finland became a member of NATO in April 2023, Russia said it will “have consequences” for Finland. Half a year later, in December 2023, Vladimir Putin said that Russia will re-establish the “Leningrad Military District”. This military district that had been tasked with taking control of Finland, was abolished after the Cold War, but now, because of Finland’s NATO membership, it will be re-established to organize an attack on Finland in the event of a major war. Russia wants to knock out the U.S. military infrastructure and occupy Finland and Finnmark, and it calls this new military district “Leningrad Military District” to make the Finns understand what it is all about.

For the countries located in the “outer zone”, it is also important for their own security to ensure détente and to prevent the United States from establishing bases for missiles and aircraft that could be used against Russia. This means that the DCA agreement with American bases by necessity opens up for Russian pre-emptive strikes. When all NATO countries had given the green light for Swedish NATO membership, Russia stated that this would have consequences for Sweden. Most likely, Russia will now target at least the five air bases that the United States has gained access to in Sweden. Sweden that formerly was outside the perimeter of a Russian attack in a major war, has now chosen to invite the United States to its military bases, which definitely will guarantee a Russian attack on Sweden in an early phase of a war. Russia has no interest in Swedish territory except for the U.S. military bases. The ignorance of the Government has exceeded my imagination.

Already in the 1940s, the risk that Moscow, in a crisis situation, would find it necessary to pre-empt the United States from attacking Russia by using bases in Norway was the reason for the Norwegian Cold War base policy from 1949, which denied the United States and other allies the right to have bases in Norway. Oslo wanted to avoid Russian worries and accordingly make Russia less inclined to attack Norwegian territory at an early stage of a conflict. We have reason to learn from this history and try to understand what is central to Russian military thinking. Nordic policy during the Cold War sought to transform the Nordic countries into region of a low-tension. It benefited us then, and it would benefit us today. I find it impossible to understand why the Governments in Northern Europe have chosen the opposite policy in recent years.