Mission and Objectives of the Russian Armed Forces

Given the foreign policy shifts of recent years and new national security priorities, the Russian Armed Forces now have a totally new set of objectives that could be broken down into the following four major dimensions:

1. Deterring the military and political threats to the security or interests of the Russian Federation
2. Supporting economic and political interests of the Russian Federation
3. Mounting other-than-war enforcement operations
4. Using military force

Specifics of the ongoing global military and political shifts allow for transmutations of the aforementioned objectives. Understandably, the existing hot-button national security issues appear to be comprehensive and multidimensional by character.

The Russian Armed Forces deter war and military-political threats as well as provide for national security through performing the following tasks:

• tracking the rising military-political tensions and uncovering war preparations to attack the Russian Federation and/or its allies;
• sustaining the m9, status, operational availability and mobilizational preparedness of the strategic nuclear forces and the relevant support capabilities to assure their functionality and usability; keeping the C2 systems ready to inflict the desired losses on the aggressor under any conditions;
• maintaining operational capabilities, war and mobilizational preparedness and training of the peacetime general purpose forces on the level high enough to beat back local aggression;
• assuring readiness for strategic deployments as part of a state-run effort to put the nation on a war footing;
• making arrangements to put in place territorial defenses.
• Supporting Russian economic and political interests breaks down into the following tasks:
• providing for security of Russian citizens in war zones and areas of political or other sort of instabilities;
• creating the friendly environment for Russian state or government-related economic activities;
• safeguarding Russian national interests in the territorial waters, continental shelf, exclusive economic zones and the World Ocean;
• running variable-scale enforcement operations directed by the Russian President to secure vital national economic and political interests;
• staging and conducting information counter-balancing operations.

The Russian Armed Forces can undertake the following peacetime enforcement operations:

• living up to the commitments in keeping with the relevant international treaty obligations and inter-governmental agreements;
• fighting international terrorism, political extremism and separatism; preventing and putting in check sabotage activities and terrorist acts;
• undertaking a partial or full-fledged strategic deployment, maintaining operational availability of the nuclear deterrence capabilities;
• running UN/CIS-mandated peace-keeping/peace-enforcement operations while operating either as part of a coalition set up by an international Russian-participated organization or on an ad-hoc basis;
• assuring a martial law/emergency regime in one or several constituent units of the Russian Federation pursuant to express directives from the National Command Authority;
• safeguarding the national borders of the Russian Federation in the air and underwater media;
• enforcing international sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council;
• preventing natural disasters and other emergencies, managing their consequences.

The use of force is in order to assure security of the Russian Federation.
The Russian Armed Forces are trained to directly engage in the following types of armed conflict:
ARMED CONFLICT
A form of conflict waged to resolve political, ethnic, religious, territorial and other kind of difference through the use of arms, with the country (countries) involved in the relevant military operations coming short of letting the tensions be escalated to the special status generally known as war. In an armed conflict the opposing sides normally pursue local military and political goals.
An armed conflict may be precipitated by an escalation of an armed incident, border conflict, limited armed tussles or skirmishes where solutions are sought through the use of force.
An armed conflict can be international (with two or more countries being involved) or (with opposing parties taking up arms within the same country to achieve their goals).

LOCAL WAR
A war between two or more countries pursuing limited political goals, where combat operations are generally prosecuted within the confines of the warring sides. It primarily bears on the (territorial, economic, political and other) interests of the countries involved.
A local war can be waged by task forces deployed in the conflict area, with an option of their being built up by way of reinforcements flown/moved in from other areas to undertake a limited strategic deployment of the nation’s armed forces.
Under certain circumstances, local wars can escalate into a regional or large-scale war.

REGIONAL WAR
A war involving the given region’s two or more countries (groups of countries) operating through the use of either national or coalition armed forces commanding both conventional and nuclear capabilities within a single region confined by the waters of seas/oceans and aerospace, with the warring sides pursuing critical military and political goals. A regional war requires a full-fledged deployment of the armed forces and economic capacities, as well as the enhanced engagement of the material resources and moral courage available to the warring countries. Should any nuclear-have countries or their allies happen to participate in a regional war, such a war can feature the threat/risk of nuclear weapons being eventually employed.

LARGE-SCALE WAR
A war between coalitions of countries or larger world powers. It can be precipitated by escalation of an armed conflict, local or regional war by way of a significant number of countries from different world regions being effectively involved. In a large-scale war, the warring sides would pursue radical military and political goals. It would require that participating countries mobilize all of their available material resources and moral courage.
Modern Russian defense planning, while being reflective of the realistic grasp of Russia’s current resources and capabilities, is based on the assumption that the Russian Armed Forces together with other national troops should be prepared to repel aggression and rout the aggressor. Besides, the Russian Armed Forces should be ready to mount active (offensive and defensive) operations under any scenario of armed conflicts being unleashed and carried on in the conditions of the adversary resorting to massive use of modern and advanced lethal weapons, with assorted WMDs making no exception.

Notably, the Russian Armed Forces should maintain the capability to:
- effectively wage two concurrent armed conflicts of any type in peacetime or in an emergency through the use of ready forces, while sustaining the strategic deterrence capability, maintaining readiness of the forces (other troops) and refraining from engaging call-up reinforcements. In addition, the Russian Armed Forces should command the capability to conduct peacekeeping missions, while operating either as part of a multinational contingent or unassisted;
- undertake strategic deployments to put in check escalation of tensions by way of assuring availability of the strategic deterrence weapons and maneuvering the committed ready forces in the event of rising military-political and strategic threats.
- beat back aerospace aggression in wartime through the use of available forces, and concurrently prosecute two local wars following completion of the full-fledged strategic deployment of the Russian Armed Forces.