A British think tank said it had obtained a four-part plan signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, outlining how his army would be able to crush Ukraine's military domination and subdue it within 10 days.

According to copies of orders issued to a group of Russian units described in a recent report by Britain's Royal United Services Institute, the Russian military had plans to surprise the enemy with overwhelming firepower, using an aggressive stance to force concessions from the international community to avoid greater bloodshed, destabilize the Ukrainian leadership and pave the way for Russia annexed the country by last August.

The four assumptions

But it is clear that things, as Newsweek noted in

a report

, did not go as planned. Nearly 10 months after the start of the war, a cease-fire is still out of reach, and the Ukrainian political leadership remains intact.

The American magazine pointed out that the Russian invasion plan revolved around the success of 4 main assumptions, namely:

  • An invasion would happen quickly, undermining the international community's ability to respond meaningfully.

  • Quickly overthrow the Ukrainian leadership, allowing pro-Russian Ukrainians to assume positions of power under the guise of propaganda.

  • Control of heating services, electricity (especially nuclear power plants), and the country's financial infrastructure.

  • And finally, Russia, with the second-strongest army in the world, as Russian General Valery Gerasimov put it before the war began, extended Russia's hegemony over Ukraine on the battlefield.

Relying on Russian military power

The magazine stated that all of these assumptions, which were concluded by the think tank's report, were based to a large extent on Russia's military power.

While the fundamentals of Russia's war were intact, the Kremlin, and Putin in particular, overestimated the Ukrainians' support for Moscow, while its military units performed poorly on the battlefield, giving the international community ample time to respond with financial and military assistance.

According to the center's report, most of the Russian military did not know about the invasion and occupation of Ukraine until days before the invasion.

Remarkably, Russia's lack of a developed surveillance system in the country left it unable to monitor troop movements or confirm successful operations against critical infrastructure, which led the country to take a number of unnecessary risks that led to heavy casualties and poor morale among its ranks.

Analysts of the think tank concluded that there were flaws in Putin's plan, as there was too much focus on the quantity of equipment, rather than the quality of personnel, their leadership, training and motivation, which prompted countries such as Britain and America to refrain from opposing Russian forces openly and to pave the way for war.