Michael Kofman
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment. Defense analysis with a focus on the Russian and Ukrainian militaries.
View on πThreads
A few thoughts on the Russian winter offensive, which began 3+ weeks ago, and has so far yielded little progress for RU forces. Poor force quality, loss of junior officers, ammunit...
A few thoughts on the current course of the war. Although winter has proven a transitional phase, with both sides focusing on force reconstitution and positional fighting. The outl...
A few incomplete thoughts on the question of mobilization. It won't solve many of the RU military's challenges in this war, but it could alter the dynamic. Fair to say that these a...
A few thoughts on the current course of the war and the situation in the Donbas. Recent Russian gains offer a sobering check on expectations for the near term. Will use a few of Na...
Thoughts on Russian losses. A thorny subject I've stayed away from because its difficult to tackle and the information gaps are vast. Numbers get thrown about with broad ranges, an...
Circling back to Russia's problem with manpower availability and the question of mobilization. Its unclear how they can sustain the war without making difficult political choices (...
Thoughts on the current state of the war. First half of the thread is a bit of a catchup for me, having not posted anything last weekend, and then the rest on where things might be...
This may prove an unpopular sentiment, but watching reactions to poor Russian military performance in Ukraine has taught me a bit about my own defense community, and that we may be...
Very long Sunday thread on the extent to which we overestimated the Russian military, a bit about the war, and on how we should think about Russian military power. 1/
Long thread about how I think the first 96 hours have gone, still very early/incomplete impressions. The initial Russian operation was premised on terrible assumptions about Ukrain...