ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 15, 2023

Key Takeaways

• Reporting from some Western sources that Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin called for Russia to end its war against Ukraine is inaccurate.

• Certain Russian players in the information space have also misinterpreted Prigozhin’s essay, further exposing fissures between some Russian milbloggers.
• The Russian information space is reckoning with demographic transitions within Russia in a way that indicates that the nationalist ideologies underpinning the war in Ukraine will continue to have reverberating domestic impacts.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party announced its intention to recruit Russian military personnel who have served in Ukraine as candidates for elections in 2023 and 2024, likely in an effort to establish itself as the definitive pro-war party in Russia.
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks near Kreminna and may be preparing to defend territory in the Kupyansk direction.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations in and around Bakhmut and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front.
• Russian forces continued defensive operations in southern Ukraine.
• A Russian opposition news source reported that Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) head Leonid Pasechnik signed a decree on April 14 authorizing spring and fall conscription in occupied Luhansk Oblast.
• The Russian State Security Service (FSB) is likely involved in efforts to target Ukrainian youth in occupied territories for law enforcement and counter-partisan purposes.

Authors: George Barros, Riley Bailey, Karolina Hird, Angela Howard, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan

See full report here.