New Report! The War-Laboratory: Ukraine and the Future of Russian Warfighting
by Roger N. McDermott
Dear Colleagues,
The Saratoga Foundation is pleased to announce a fascinating new report: The War-Laboratory: Ukraine and the Future of Russian Warfighting, authored by Senior Fellow Roger N. McDermott, as part of our ongoing Kremlin Strategic Failure project.
This report examines how the war in Ukraine is reshaping Russian military science by accelerating the conversion of battlefield contingencies into doctrine. At its center is a September 2025 article by Lieutenant General Aleksandr Serzhantov and Dr. Nikolai Ageev, which contends that the printsipy voennogo iskusstva (principles of military art) must be revised to reflect twenty-first-century warfare. Their framework codifies Russia’s battlefield experience—ISR saturation, drone-dominated frontlines, systemic infrastructure strikes, and the erosion of the front/rear divide—into purported “laws of military science.”
In this important study, Roger highlights how this represents a decisive epistemological shift. Unlike Soviet theorists who drew on the “history-mirror” method, Serzhantov and Ageev embody a “war-laboratory” approach, treating Ukraine as a live experiment where both successes and failures are rapidly recoded as universal laws. Even Russia’s failed opening strikes of February 2022 are reframed as confirmation of a “law of exponential distribution.” Contingency is thus absorbed into determinism, legitimizing escalation as scientifically inevitable.
The result is a doctrinal system that is highly adaptive yet intellectually brittle. Rapid cycles of combat observation and codification produce swift innovation, but the lack of coherent conceptual foundations creates internal contradictions and embeds escalationist bias. For Western militaries, this duality carries two implications:
Russia’s war-laboratory approach ensures a continuous flow of doctrinal innovation, with Ukraine serving as a template for future wars.
Deterministic framings of escalation and systemic targeting erode traditional constraints, heightening risks of miscalculation and uncontrolled escalation.
Understanding this dynamic—adaptation built upon fragile conceptual ground—is essential for anticipating Russia’s evolving approach to warfare.
We invite you to read this timely and deeply researched analysis, which sheds light not only on Russia’s failures but also on the evolving nature of modern war.
👉 Please download the full report here.
Enjoy!
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