Inside the bleak US assessment of Russia's military status

The slide deck, titled “Sanctions and Export Control Eroding Moscow’s War Effort,” notes that Russia has lost “over 6,000 pieces of equipment” since the start of the war. Furthermore, Russia’s forces are “expending munitions at an unsustainable rate,” the deck says, though it doesn’t detail how the U.S. knows that.

The presentation also lauds the impact of export controls on Russia’s military, namely that Moscow is relying on “contraband chips” and “lower-quality imports” from countries like China. The Kremlin is now suffering a “critical shortage of bearings undermining production of tanks, aircraft, submarines, and other military systems” while the Russian defense industry is “short of supplies and components … for marine diesel engines, helicopter and aircraft engine parts, tank fire control systems.”

Allied nations should remain vigilant, says the U.S.-produced slide deck, since Russian intelligence services have been “tasked to illicitly acquire Western technology and parts.”