Institute for the Study of War &
The Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 3, 2023
Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, George Barros, Madison Williams, and
Frederick W. Kagan
January 3, 6:45 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is
updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a series of instructions for Russian agencies
and high-level officials on January 2 likely to address criticisms of the Kremlin’s
treatment of military personnel and portray the Kremlin as an involved war-time
apparatus.
These instructions are ostensibly an effort to address grievances voiced by mothers of
servicemen during a highly staged November 25 meeting with Putin.
The 11 instructions direct several
high-ranking members of the Russian government—including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Prime
Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin—and government agencies
(including the Russian Ministry of Defense) to collaborate with other agencies and non-government
organizations to generate a list of recommendations for addressing and improving supply, benefits, and
healthcare processes for military personnel.
Putin instructed the Ministry of Culture to assist the
nongovernmental organization “Committee of the Fatherland Warrior’s Families” to help create
documentaries and other material to showcase the “courage and heroism” of Russian forces in Ukraine
and to screen domestic documentaries to “fight against the spread of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist
ideology.” These instructions are unlikely to generate significant changes and will likely take significant
time to implement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that Russia is using a variety of social
schemes to justify the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. In his annual New Year's
speech, Putin thanked Russians for their efforts to send children from occupied Ukrainian territory on
“holidays.”
ISW has previously reported instances of Russian officials using the guise of “holidays” and
vacation schemes to justify the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.
Putin’s list of instructions also directs Russian Commissioner for the Rights of the Child Maria Lvova-
Belova and the occupation heads of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts to "take
additional measures to identify minors...left without parental care” in occupied areas to provide them
with ”state social assistance” and ”social support.”
The Kremlin may seek to use this social benefit
scheme to tabulate the names of children it deems to be orphans to identify children for deportation to
Russia and potentially open avenues for their adoption into Russian families. ISW continues to note
that the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families may constitute a violation of the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Systemic failures in Russia’s force generation apparatus continue to plague personnel
capabilities to the detriment of Russian operational capacity in Ukraine. Russian
milbloggers claimed on January 3 that the Russian military has sent recently mobilized personnel
trained as artillerymen and tankers following their mobilizations to infantry divisions in Ukraine with
no formal infantry training.
Although the use of personnel in non-infantry branches in infantry roles
is not unusual, the Russian military’s practice in this case is likely very problematic. The Russian Armed
Forces devoted too little time to training mobilized personnel for use in the branches they had
