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"I believe that at the heart of Russian military thinking is how Marshall Zhukov marched across Eastern Europe to Berlin," a former high-level CIA official told Newsweek in an interview. Zhukov's orders were to "line up the artillery and ... flatten everything ahead of you," he says. "'Then send in the peasant Army to kill or rape anyone left alive.' Subtle the Russians are not."

Is this the type of person who worked at the CIA? There is partial truth in what he said about the Red Army. At the beginning of the war, the Red Army was a rather blunt weapon. A large part of this was due to poor training for the officers and ranks. But the Red Army learned and trained. Ivan was able implement their pre-war doctrine of Deep Battle and Operations. The apex of this was Operation Bagration where Army Group Center was annihilated.

Zhukov was probably the most ruthless of the top Soviet generals. He did not give a damn about casualties. The two most notorious examples were Operation Mars and the Berlin campaign. In the first, Zhukov tried to pinch a salient where the terrain favored the defenders. The Berlin campaign Zhukov wanted to reach Berlin before the Western Powers and his own comrade Konev

Looking back at Russian military history they tend to do poorly when asked to invade some country without any pretext against a competent opponent. Napoleon was able to repeatedly smash the Russians until 1812. The Japanese inflicted a major defeat on Imperial Russia. The Soviets were defeated outside Warsaw, the Finns inflicted severe losses of men and material, and Afghanistan.

Where Ivan does remarkable well is defending the Motherland.

One thing I have read is Russian still has the rigid top down leadership structure where subordinate commanders have very little leeway in trying to meet objectives.

If one is interested, there is a tremendous amount of revisonist histories on the Ostfront published over the past thrity years; thanks to the opening of the Soviet archives. Some of the authors I have read include Dan Glantz, Prit Buttar, and David Stahel.

Here is Col Douglas Macgregor from Tucker Carlson Tonight 3/1/22. He seems to one of the few that actually uses logic and not emotion to give his perspective on the events.

https://youtu.be/SHKwp6xGl4M?t=230

Russia's military is weak and backwards.

Apparently so, if the stories we are hearing about the convoy are even close to being accurate.

Having done that sort of thing myself in the dark and distant past, I think the Russkies would have to be incredibly incompetent.

Incredible. Yes. That's the word.

On the contrary Georgy Zhukov was a man of humble origins and who started off as a conscript in The Imperial Russian Army.

He was known to care a great deal about ordinary soldiers