Using the concept of national identity as a starting point, RAND researchers developed a framework in an effort to illuminate the underlying causes of Russian manipulation, Ukrainian resistance, and the Russia-Ukraine war.

In this report, RAND researchers examine the reasons behind Russia's evolution toward a unified strategic operation, as well as the capabilities that would be necessary to execute key conventional offensive tasks in such an operation. They focus on four capability areas: long-range conventional strikes against critical military and civilian targets, electronic warfare, counterspace actions, and cyberattacks against critical infrastructure.

"Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is by far its largest and most consequential commitment of military forces abroad in recent decades. The stakes for Russia are extremely high. However, despite these stakes, the Kremlin has not provided a clear and consistent public narrative regarding its objectives, maintaining significant ambiguity and even adopting contradictory stances. In this report, the authors analyze Russia's official public narrative regarding its war aims in Ukraine in the first year of its full-scale invasion. They begin by investigating Russian strategic writings and pre-2022 Russian practice of objective-setting when using force abroad. The authors use this analysis to generate expectations about how Russia would have been expected to behave during the full-scale invasion. They then document the reality of Moscow's objective-setting in the first year of the Ukraine war through a qualitative analysis of Russian leaders' key speeches and a quantitative study of an original dataset of official statements on the war. The authors compare this reality with the expectations, noting significant divergences. Finally, they then provide implications of their findings for U.S. and allied policymakers."--

The role of space-based services in the war in Ukraine offers important lessons for how the United States must prepare for events in the space domain in potential future conflicts. RAND researchers recount space activities throughout the war and extract relevant lessons for the national security community. They use publicly available information to examine the mission areas that were most significant in shaping the war.

Russia has disseminated large volumes of false content targeted at Ukrainians, those living in Russia, and global audiences, including those in the United States and Europe. Both Russia's attempts to sow false narratives and the Ukrainian response during the war provide a unique laboratory for considering how nations can counter disinformation and propaganda during conflict. In this report, the authors seek to distill some of those lessons. They offer a broad case study of Ukraine's information and counter disinformation war and highlight key lessons that can help the U.S. national security establishment prepare for and counter disinformation during U.S. contingency operations.

In this volume, the authors of several translated articles, which were published between 2002 and 2020, provide insight into the evolution of military-scientific thinking in both Russia and Ukraine on the concept of information confrontation. The authors detail the impact of the rapid development of information technologies and information weapons over the past two decades on the military-scientific literature of Russia and Ukraine. The articles in this volume provide insight into the varying definitions and subtypes of information confrontation, its historical evolution and application, the technical tools used in the conduct of information confrontation, and the relationship between the connected yet distinct concepts of information confrontation and information warfare.

RAND researchers reviewed a variety of Chinese and Russian primary sources to understand internal Chinese and Russian perceptions of U.S. military space-related policies and activities. This report presents the results of their analysis.

Information confrontation, with historical roots in Russian (and Soviet) military thinking, is an important element of Russian military strategy. The Ukrainian experience offers insights into Russia's present-day and future use of information confrontation and hybrid warfare.

This report explores where the United States, China, and Russia may be competing for influence in secondary theaters; where and why competition might turn to conflict; what form that conflict might take; and implications for the United States.