The Core Brain of the Russian Armed Forces: The Modern General Staff in Institutional Context

Key Chapter Title List

1. Introduction
2. Overview of the Russian General Staff
3. Formal Structure and Core Missions
4. Relations with Other Military Bureaucracies
5. Role in Civil-Military Relations and Regime Politics
6. Historical Evolution
7. Wartime Functions
8. Chief of the General Staff Tenure
9. Influence of the General Staff
10. The General Staff and Military Decision-Making
11. The General Staff and Political Influence
12. Conclusion

Document Introduction

Against the backdrop of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and renewed academic and policy focus on command and control systems, military decision-making mechanisms, and the dynamics of Russian civil-military relations, the U.S. European Command's Russia Strategic Initiative commissioned CNA to produce this report. It aims to provide the public with a professional primer on the Russian General Staff. As the most central operational body within the Russian Armed Forces, the General Staff serves the dual function of being the "brain" for military planning and the headquarters for operational strategy. Its position and operational model within the Russian military system are crucial for understanding the logic of Russian military operations.

The main body of the report is divided into two core sections. The first section provides a comprehensive overview of the Russian General Staff, covering its formal organizational structure and core missions, its institutional relationships with other Russian military bureaucracies, its role in civil-military relations, its historical evolution, and its special functions during wartime. This offers researchers, analysts, and observers a quick reference framework for the key components and operational mechanisms of this institution.

The second section delves into an analysis of the dimensions of the General Staff's influence in Russian military-political decision-making. This includes its institutional role within the Ministry of Defense, the military ecosystem, and the military-political order. It explores its operational methods as a military decision-making body while examining the dynamics of political and policy influence and its position in the development of military and military-political doctrine. The report pays particular attention to the tenure continuity of the Chief of the General Staff—the highest-ranking military position in the Russian military—and its impact on institutional stability. It focuses on analyzing the leadership tenure of Valery Gerasimov since his appointment in 2012 and the developments following the 2024 cabinet reshuffle.

The analysis in this report is based on English and Russian secondary sources, official Russian government documents, and news reports. It employs a research methodology combining open-source information description with theoretical perspectives, without relying on a single overarching analytical framework. The findings indicate that, despite potential bureaucratic tensions within the Russian military system, the General Staff has successfully maintained its core position as a knowledge hub, the center for war planning and execution, and an operational-strategic decision-making body, tightly integrated with regional military districts and wartime theater command systems.

Under Gerasimov's long-term leadership, even amidst multiple challenges before and during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the General Staff has maintained robust development and continued innovation through command and control modernization and operational-strategic command reforms. The report's conclusion provides key insights for Western policymakers, noting that the General Staff will remain the core institution within the Russian Armed Forces influencing decision-making and dominating war planning and operational strategy for the foreseeable future. Disruptive actions targeting its key components (such as the National Defense Management Center) could impose structural pressure on the Russian military system.