Future of the Russian Navy
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I have a short piece at 1945 on the future of the Russian Navy. One of my biggest questions about this war is about the shape of Russian power after the conflict is over. Russia after 2022 will look a lot different than Russia before the war (very possibly even in terms of its territorial shape), especially with respect to the economics of its defense industrial base. It doesn’t seem to me that the surface fleet has much of a future, and not just because of what happened to Moskva.
Strategically, Russia’s naval situation has changed considerably over the past several months. The Baltic is for all intents and purposes closed to Russia upon the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. In no conceivable conflict could Russian warships (even submarines) use the Baltic without running the risk of imminent destruction. The accession of Finland complicates Russian access in the north, giving NATO better eyes on the major Russian naval bases in the Arctic, including the ballistic missile fleet. Russia has the most flexibility in the Pacific, but Japanese re-armament and the increasingly fraught relationship between Tokyo and Moscow make significant action difficult to contemplate.
On that last point I also have a short piece on the legacy of Shinzo Abe.