As a result, Zapad 2025 is a critical data point for NATO and its partners, as it provides a clear picture of how Russia’s military, political, and economic systems are adapting to a protracted war, limited industrial production and low budget. Russia’s IPW playbook remains, but it is now being refined to be more effective and efficient under real-world constraints. The most critical challenge identified is a prolonged IAMD duel to degrade a defender’s strike complex, an element that Russia has prioritised in its wartime training. Based on the analysis, a multifaceted response from NATO is required.
Assessments and Strategic Considerations of Zapad 2025
NATO must be prepared to exploit predictable key vulnerabilities and improve several areas. Apparently, Russian IPW strategy relies on early deep strikes against critical infrastructure, C2 nodes, airbases, and logistics hubs. Hence, NATO and Ukraine must prioritise hardening these nodes to make them more resilient to attack. Furthermore, accelerating the integration of air and missile defence and counter-ISR capabilities is the centre of gravity for a contemporary defensive strategy against Russia’s IPW playbook. The exercise’s focus on GBAD and EW indicates that Russia sees these as its most effective tools for achieving decision on favourable terms, necessitating that NATO’s defensive posture is centred on a robust and redundant counter-IAMD complex.
Zapad 2025’s economic underpinnings reveals that sanctions have forced Russia to adapt and have created long-term vulnerabilities. Sanctions are working and should be enhanced and aggressively enforced. The focus must be on targeting the specific components critical to Russia’s defence industry, such as semiconductors, guidance kits, precision machine tools, and their freight corridors. This requires a concerted international effort to disrupt Russia’s complex circumvention networks, as highlighted by Sanctions 2.0 proposal.
Finally, the exercise was showcased Russian narrative and propaganda. A key objective for NATO is to deny Moscow escalation dominance without mirroring its rhetoric. This can be achieved by combining public disclosure of Russia’s under-reported exercise activities with a calibrated Allied posture. Publicly highlighting the discrepancies between Russia’s claims and its actual capabilities, and demonstrating Alliance cohesion through well-publicised parallel exercises and forward sustainment drills, can effectively counter Russian narratives and introduce uncertainty for Russian planners.
The central takeaway is that Russia’s IPW playbook is not static. The focus on long-range fires, an IAMD duel, and electronic and cognitive shaping points to a deliberate effort to build a military that can overwhelm a defender’s strike complex and then exploit opportunities on the ground. The war has exposed systemic vulnerabilities including logistical fragilities, command brittleness, and an economy on an unsustainable, militarised footing. These limitations are being addressed, however imperfectly, through training and industrial adaptation.
For NATO, Zapad 2025 underscores a fundamental requirement for a nuanced threat assessment. The Alliance must not be misled by the down-scaled optics of the exercise. Instead, it must recognise that the exercise’s focus on high-end capabilities represents a persistent, long-term threat. NATO’s posture should not be a mirror image of Russia’s, but rather a robust, cohesive, and intelligent response that targets Russia’s demonstrated weaknesses, strengthens its own key vulnerabilities, and denies the Kremlin the political and strategic victories it seeks through coercive signalling. The exercise is a stark reminder that while the war in Ukraine has imposed significant costs on Russia, it has also created a more adapted, albeit constrained, military that remains intent on achieving its strategic objectives.
