Russia Will Pursue Desperate Strategies After It Exhausts Its Missile Supply

“Aside from the fact that history shows that rockets are far more useful at inflicting damage against military than civilian targets, their misuse may indicate an underlying strategic desperation in the Kremlin.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s generals have made a critical error in their recklessly profligate expenditure of 4,700 of their scarce theatre missiles on civilian targets. The largest barrage of Russian rockets launched thus far in the war, on November 23, 2022, included 70 Kalibr cruise missiles and five Lancet drones (worth $400 to $700 million), killing six Ukrainian civilians and wounding 36. Aside from the fact that history shows that rockets are far more useful at inflicting damage against military than civilian targets, their misuse may indicate an underlying strategic desperation in the Kremlin.

Six weeks of precision attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter, beginning on October 10th, have reduced Russia’s arsenal of Iskander, Kalibr, and Kh-47 missiles. Other remaining systems, whose warheads are much smaller or are optimized for use against naval targets, include the 3M-55 Onyx, Kh-101, Kh-555, Kh-22, and Kh-35. At an expenditure rate of 50 missiles per volley every three days, that leaves only six days worth of volleys, spread out over three weeks. With estimates of Ukrainian non-combatant deaths due to missile, artillery, and air strikes at less than 1,000, each inflicted death is costing Russia over $2 million. Because of extensive Western financial backing and contributions to Kyiv’s air defenses (and their army’s success on the battlefield), the Ukrainian people are bearing their torment with robustly high morale.

That President Putin’s generals do not seem to be pacing their rocket volleys suggests that the political planning horizon in Moscow is short-term, typical of domestic political crisis management. In principle, bombing civilian targets works by eroding a target’s manufacturing base and compelling civilian flight. However, most of Ukraine’s military supplies are provided from abroad, its cities were already reduced in population by evacuation, and it has only made incremental steps toward wartime mobilization of its economy. In fact, evidence from the Second World War indicates that cities only begin to become uninhabitable when 70% of their housing has been severely damaged or destroyed, a metric that has not even been inflicted on Kharkiv, which was exposed to much greater Russian artillery shelling on the frontline for four months. Russia’s practice of targeting hospitals, which produced significant demoralization in Syria, has less of an effect in Ukraine, where health care services can be easily dispersed.