Why is the Russian army so dysfunctional? The pervasiveness of organized crime in Russian society, which has penetrated all levels of the military, may be the driving force.

Twitter ^ | 3/12/2022 | Kamil Galeev

[Zhang Fei]

Why Russian army is so weak? When Russia invaded, experts thought it'd win in 24-72 hours. Two weeks later the war's still going. How come? On paper Russian superiority's overwhelming Although Russia projects warlike image, its military r weak and don't know how to fight wars

 

Notwithstanding with its warlike image, boosted by massive PR campaign, Russian military have nearly zero experience of fighting conventional wars against other regular armies. They were quite successful in suppressing civilian riots ofc, in Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, etc

 

Russians were less successful in suppressing guerrilla movements in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Guerillas didn't much heavy weaponry, didn't have proper air defence. And yet, Russians suffered high casualties and lost the First Chechen War, despite overwhelming material superiority

 

Since WWII Russia never fought a conventional war against a regular army. The only exception was Georgia 2008. Russia invaded to support separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and defeated tiny Georgian army. That was the closest Russia had to a real war in last 70 y.

 

Individual Russian military specialists fought in Korea, Vietnam, Angola etc. But army as a whole did not. Russian military machine, from recruitment to logistics, hasn't been checked in a war against a large regular army since 1945. That's the first experiment we're having now

 

Since 1945 Russian army fought against enemies neither of which had a regular army of its own. Enemies of Russia had no structure, little training, tiny firepower. To compensate this, Russia heavily invests in propaganda glorifying its military. But what do they really look like?

 

December 2021. Thieves-in-law imposed tribute on a Russian military base, making NCOs & officers to pay them cash. They specifically target veterans of Syria who earned cash there. They harass, threaten, beat them. Leader of the gang was arrested but released in several months

 

 

That's not an exception. That's a rule. Russian military is constantly harassed by thieves and forced to pay money. Just four random headlines on how thieves force literally any military including the ones managing the nuclear rockets to pay them tribute. Russian army is a prey

 

 

Let's introduce some sociological context. Russian thieves traditionally portray themselves as the counterculture, the rebels. We don't care about the official law (Law of Cops), we follow only the Law of Thieves. We constitute a parallel state much superior to the official one

 

Thieves dominate in prisons. Their propaganda is working so well, that many naive prisoners really view thieves as rebels. But then they start doubting the narrative. They wonder, what if thieves play rebels but in reality are actively collaborating with prison administration?

 

If prisoners refuse to work and try to sabotage the production, thieves will plead, persuade, threaten and then physically force them to resume their work. Thieves may develop very long and complicated argumentation, but with only one imperative - production goals must be met

 

That's well reflected in culture. Consider, Беспредел - a great movie on how Russian institutional culture (shaped by prison culture) works in reality. A prisoner refuses to work and tells administration. They inform the thieves and that's what happens

And only much later prisoners realise: thieves are not a parallel state. They're just another branch of the same state machine. They're controlled opposition which actively cooperates with authorities, do whatever state commands and never ever cross the line, or they're doomed

 

 

Thieves racketeering the military, including Syria veterans, nuke personnel is not an "accident". It's a deliberate government policy to keep professional military low in dominance hierarchy. Russian state purposefully keeps its military in this position. It's all part of a plan

 

If you want, you can dig further into how harassed, how abused and how low in hierarchy the Russian military are. Of course the lowest position ever is taken by conscripts. There are many publications on how conscripts were forced into gay prostitution to earn cash for higher ups

 

Ok, that's all part of a plan. But why would they develop such a plan? Well, higher-ups are afraid of the army. Russian thieves play rebels, being a part of state apparatus. The same way Russia plays a military regime being in fact a state security regime

 

That's Putin celebrating the Day of State Security Worker. Indeed, the domination of State Security "the new nobility" over all other institutions is a particular feature of Putin's regime. Which hadn't been the case in USSR. State security rule is the major innovation of Putin

 

State security are *not* the military. That's another institution which has very uneasy relations with soldiers. That's understandable. State security will easily suppress any civilian revolt and any guerilla. Thus the only inner force that could overthrow them would be the army

 

You can read a more detailed account of relations between the Russian state and its army here. But for now I wanna stress, they're very concerned about the potential rivalry from the army and took every effort to prevent it. Thus they castrated the army

 

One precaution is to do a cleansing after each military conflict. In peacetime, power of military generals is low. They're bounded by instructions, protocols, guidelines, are overwatched by state security and military prosecutors. But during the war this control nearly disappears

 

The longer the war lasts, the less procedural and more personal military power becomes. Soon nobody cares about procedures. Everything is done by personal oral orders. Troops get used to unquestioning obedience to a general's word. So you have to do a cleaning up after each war

 

State security fears potential rivalry from the army. So they introduced several mechanisms of control. One is to do a cleaning up after each war killing generals who got too influential among the troops. And leaving the less infuential ones. That's a negative selection mechanism

 

Kremlin actively promotes state security to the army positions. A typical monologue of a Russian professional military: 1. [Long patriotic speech] 2. Complaints on how he'll never get promoted, cuz all the positions are given to young state security with no military experience

 

Third layer is extreme, unbelievable antiillectualism among the military officers promoted by the state. If Prussian army was the most intellectual army in Europe, modern Russian is the least. Again, it's not an accident. It's a deliberate policy to minimise this internal threat

 

Let's sum up. Kremlin is not maxing efficiency, it's minimising the threat. Recruit as low IQ officers as possible, give them very narrow training. If some officers are capable and rising quickly, kill them. Appoint as many state security to the army to make it more controllable

 

To minimise the threat from the army, the ruling state security attacks the army mythos. Why would mafia even dare to racketeer military officers? Because they know in case of conflict the state will back the mafia. These guys stand much higher in Russian hierarchy than soldiers

 

This explains all these strange phenomena such as thieves harassing the military bases, soldiers being forced into gay prostitution, etc. I don't think Putin personally ordered that (though he might). But he purposefully destroys the army mythos, to eliminate a rival for power

 

Words cannot describe how low in dominance hierarchy the Russian army is. To get some idea, watch this video from a Russian official TV channel. An officer asks for a minute of silence for "our special operation boys dying there" and see what happens. Army has no respect at all

 

Conclusions about the Russian artillery-centric army are not wrong. But they must be considered in political context. You must be artillery centric, if you have low morale troops. Nobody respects them, they have no self respect either. They can't stand the close range fight

 

If regime trained capable high morale infantry with intelligent officers, it'd constitute a mortal political threat. So it will maintain low morale incapable infantry with the dumbest officers possible and kill brighter ones. Artillery is way to fight *somehow* with these troops

 

Russian regime pretends to be military. But it's not . Its thinking, language, methods are very state security. On Feb 24 Putin started a Special Operation in Ukraine and on Feb 27 congratulated Russian forces there with the annniversary of the "Day of Special Operation Forces"

 

Why Feb 27? What happened that day? On Feb 26, 2015 Putin ordered to establish a new holiday, the Day of Special Operation Forces. The first one will be tomorrow, Feb 27, 2015 - and then every year. Next day, Feb 27, 2015 oppositional leader Nemtsov was killed in view of Kremlin

[Zhang Fei]

Ultimately, the Russian mob is just another faction Putin balances against the other players in Russian society. The idea is to set them at each other's throats so they don't come at Putin individually or collectively. This is pretty standard realpolitik in monarchies/dictatorships, but it's amusing to watch it in operation in Russia.

[CMailBag]

Maybe the Russian is ‘Woke’ like ours..

[CMailBag]

Russian Army

[Zhang Fei]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Second_Chechen_War_assassinations

There’s a list of Russian generals killed after the Second Chechen War. The question is whether they were killed by Chechens or by Putin because they were getting too powerful. Note that Russia’s is ultimately an Oriental army. And by Oriental, I mean both the Near and Far East. In the Near East, Turkish generals ran the show. In Iraq, Egypt and Libya, officers removed the ruler and put themselves in charge.

In Oriental armies, soldiers view themselves as contenders for the throne. They are robotically obedient on their face, yet will move against their ruler when given the chance. Whereas Western armies are independent-minded on their face, yet robotically obedient in political terms, with no thought given to seizing power for themselves.

[Cronos]

I was reading Orlando Figes book on the 19th century Crimean war.

It is astonishing how similar the Russian forces today are to what they were then. In the 29th century their preferred enemy was the khanates to the south and east. When they faced western armies they were crushed.

[BradyLS]

If true (and I concede that it sounds convincing) I marvel that Putin attacked Ukraine knowing what an abysmal Army he has.

[Kevmo]

There is a case developing that the Ukes could fight off the Rukes and win, or at least get a pullback like what happened in Afghanistan.

But their country is already devastated.

Maybe they won’t be so reluctant to move forward on their MAP [Membership Action Plan] for NATO after this.

[Zhang Fei]

[I was reading Orlando Figes book on the 19th century Crimean war.

It is astonishing how similar the Russian forces today are to what they were then. In the 29th century their preferred enemy was the khanates to the south and east. When they faced western armies they were crushed.]

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WWII may have been a fluke. When Stalin and Khrushchev admitted that the mountains of equipment we provided them were essential to their victory, they weren’t being modest. The Battle of Khalkin Gol is generally venerated as a crushing Russian victory over the Japanese. And yet new material from Soviet archives suggests that some of the commentary may be more myth than reality:

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol#Soviet_assessment
[The battle was the first victory for the soon-to-be-famous Soviet general Georgy Zhukov, earning him the first of his four Hero of the Soviet Union awards. The two other generals, Grigoriy Shtern and Yakov Smushkevich, had important roles and were also awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union. They would, however, both be executed in the 1941 Purges. Zhukov himself was promoted and transferred west to the Kiev district. The battle experience gained by Zhukov was put to good use in December 1941 at the Battle of Moscow. Zhukov was able to use this experience to launch the first successful Soviet counteroffensive against the German invasion of 1941. Many units of the Siberian and other trans-Ural armies were part of this attack, and the decision to move these divisions from Siberia was aided by the Soviet spy Richard Sorge in Tokyo, who alerted the Soviet government that the Japanese were looking south and were unlikely to launch another attack against Siberia in the immediate future. A year after defending Moscow against the advancing Germans, Zhukov planned and executed the Red Army’s offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad, using a technique very similar to Khalkhin Gol, in which the Soviet forces held the enemy fixed in the center, built up an undetected mass force in the immediate rear area, and launched a pincer attack on the wings to trap the German army.

Following the battle, the Soviets generally found the results unsatisfactory, despite their victory. Though the Soviet forces in the Far East in 1939 were not plagued by fundamental issues to the same extent as those in Europe during the 1941 campaigns, their generals were still unimpressed by their army’s performance. As noted by Pyotr Grigorenko, the Red Army went in with a very large advantage in technology, numbers, and firepower, yet still suffered huge losses, which he blamed on poor leadership.[29]

Although their victory and the subsequent negotiation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact secured the Far East for the duration of the Soviet-German War, the Red Army always remained cautious about the possibility of another, larger Japanese incursion as late as early 1944. In December 1943, when the American military mission proposed a logistics base be set up east of Lake Baikal, the Red Army authorities were according to Coox “shocked by the idea and literally turned white”.[73] Due to this caution, the Red Army kept a large force in the Far East even during the bleakest days of the war in Europe. For example, on July 1, 1942, Soviet forces in the Far East consisted of 1,446,012 troops, 11,759 artillery pieces, 2,589 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 3,178 combat aircraft.[74] Despite this, the Soviet operations chief of the Far Eastern Front, General A. K. Kazakovtsev, was not confident in his army group’s ability to stop an invasion if the Japanese committed to it (at least in 1941–1942), commenting: “If the Japanese enter the war on Hitler’s side ... our cause is hopeless.”[75] ]

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My guess is the Japanese gave up on attacking the Soviets because the cost-benefit ratio worked better in Southeast Asia, where there were oil fields to be seized in the Dutch East Indies, and European holdings in the Orient were woefully under-garrisoned because of the war in Europe. Another issue is that a Soviet collapse would have tested the true nature of Japan’s relationship with Germany. Would Japan and Germany be friends, or would they fight each other for land and resources the way many similar alliances of convenience have fallen apart once a common enemy was vanquished?

[eyedigress]

I do not buy any of it.

If Russia wants the Ukraine, they will take it.

[Zhang Fei]

[If true (and I concede that it sounds convincing) I marvel that Putin attacked Ukraine knowing what an abysmal Army he has.]

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At best, Putin was expecting an Anschluss, with Russian-flag waving Ukrainians lining the route of approach. At worst, he thought he’d get a replay of Crimea, where bought-off Ukrainian generals let the Russians take over without resistance. Instead, he got a large scale version of the battles that have been raging over the Donbass since 2014.

Another rumor I heard was that Putin paid large sums of money to one of his men to buy off the Ukrainian generals in charge of the country’s defenses. That fella pocketed the money, since what difference does it make whether you pay them off or not? It’s not like Putin’s going to invade Ukraine. That’s just nuts. Then Putin invaded Ukraine, and the missing payoffs became a pressing issue. That was when Putin arrested the guy.

[indthkr]

"thieves force literally any military including the ones managing the nuclear rockets to pay them tribute."

Disturbing if true

[Zhang Fei]

[I do not buy any of it.

If Russia wants the Ukraine, they will take it.]

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Russia ruled Poland for hundreds of years. They left that outpost of the empire after leaving 60,000 dead on the battlefield.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War

If Ukraine can inflict similar losses, Russia will leave.

[Zhang Fei]

[Disturbing if true ]

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Not really. They’re looking to make money, not turn Russia into a gigantic grease stain.

[algore]

Our awesome woke army is awesomely awesome said someone

[Zhang Fei]

[Our awesome woke army is awesomely awesome said someone]

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Woke or not, it’s not the US military losing over 300 dead a day in a nothing war. The Russian military is a termite-infested mess. Tommy Franks made it look easy. Here’s a hint. It only *looks* easy.

[datura]

You must not know any former Soviet soldiers.

[BeauBo]

This quagmire might bring down their whole corrupt system.

I hope that somebody is planning to help shape its replacement toward better Governance, because left to themselves, there seem to be no healthy Russian organizations capable being responsible stewards.

[Zhang Fei]

I’m skeptical. As long as he has the security services in the palm of his hand, he will kill his internal enemies and remain firmly in charge. Note that Kim Il-sung lost an entire army invading South Korea, yet not only remained in power, but handed the throne to his son, Kim Jong-il. And his grandson, Kim Jong-un remains King in all but name.

[BeauBo]

Their focus on eliminating any potential rivals (somewhat like the Democratic Party in that respect) has so gutted their society, that recovering from a collapse of the system will be much harder.

But such systems are brittle. When they break, they can shatter quickly.

[wardaddy]

Lol

This one needs an academy award for propaganda

A little statue of Goebbels