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]

[Lol

This one needs an academy award for propaganda

A little statue of Goebbels]

---

When you’re losing 300 men a day in a nothing war like Russia is, that’s when you know the termites have come home to roost.

[Zhang Fei]

[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.]

---

That’s true about almost everything. The end came slowly, and then suddenly. Putin did not inherit the throne. He was Yeltsin’s eminence grise. I think he won’t simply hold on - he’ll maintain a firm grip on power until the Grim Reaper calls on him in the fullness of time.

[patriotfury]

I am not a neo-con, or a fan of NATO for several reasons (and far less a fan of the EU), but the Western talking points aren’t even an intelligent psyop, and only work well for the historically illiterate.

Worse, once an arrogant person takes a position, even if they were to be showered with hard facts, they will not accept them.

At such a point, the truth is simply untenable.

NATO —

A few points on that NATO thang[ey] -

#1. For 45 years, the geographic distance between CCCP and NATO was anywhere between roughly 3” inches, all the way up to approximately 150 yards.

Not 30, 50, 250 miles.

((And that was with CCCP and its Warsaw Pact tipping out at near 55,000 nuclear warheads, 67,000 tanks, more than 70,000 armored infantry fighting vehicles, and over 71,000 artillery guns. Except or nuclear warheads, in each category, NATO was outnumbered anywhere from 8-10 to 1 ( or more), on a border which was only feet from CCCP. The only thing keeping Moscow from rapidly smashing all of Europe was MAD, and US nuclear artillery. Thankfully, God raised up Reagan, whi crushed CCCP with finance and trade policy, there would be a necessary CCCP transition to CIS, and there has been reprieve.

#2. NATO has not admitted a nation since 2004.

#3. While NATO has an “anyone is welcome to apply policy”, NATO membership requires UNANIMOUS CONSENT for membership, and several prominent EU nations have preemptively said no to Ukraine membership (multiple times), specifically because of the large 9 nation, Kremlin controlled CIS military threat, and it’s strong Beijing/Moscow alliance which has existed since 2009/2010, but now publically recognized in the past month.

#4. Ukraine did begin the NATO “MAP” process required for all applicants, but didn’t apply for NATO membership until Russia took Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014. After Moscow took the Donbass region and it’s rich resources, and Crimea, nearly 74% of the population wanted NATO membership, over double the number from 2008.

Specific to this point, Putin ignited public and subsequent political motivation in favor of NATO across Ukraine.

It is a detached individual and society which looks from a far off, and judges the people being bombed, rocketed, shelled, burned, eliminated, and their nation wiped out.

Interesting what fear and desperation can do to a population -

[Kevmo]

but the Western talking points aren’t even an intelligent psyop, and only work well for the historically illiterate.
***I did not mention the “western talking points”. I don’t know nor care what they are. I presented what my own assessment of the situation is, not some talking point. Arguing against a talking point is strawman arguing.

Worse, once an arrogant person takes a position, even if they were to be showered with hard facts, they will not accept them.
***Perhaps you should look in the mirror for such a person.

At such a point, the truth is simply untenable.
***What truth? Take a writing class.

NATO —

A few points on that NATO thang[ey] -
***Now hold on. Didn’t YOU say that the “ talking points was not even an intelligent psyop, and only work well for the historically illiterate”? Then why go off those very same talking points? I didn’t bring them up. YOU are. What you’re writing amounts to a giant straw argument.

Hence, I will take up your remaining arguments in a separate post.

[Kevmo]

#1. For 45 years, the geographic distance between CCCP and NATO was anywhere between roughly 3” inches, all the way up to approximately 150 yards. Not 30, 50, 250 miles.
***So,.. what’s your point, other than simple browbeating?

((And that was with CCCP and its Warsaw Pact tipping out at near 55,000 nuclear warheads, 67,000 tanks, more than 70,000 armored infantry fighting vehicles, and over 71,000 artillery guns. Except or nuclear warheads, in each category, NATO was outnumbered anywhere from 8-10 to 1 ( or more), on a border which was only feet from CCCP. The only thing keeping Moscow from rapidly smashing all of Europe was MAD, and US nuclear artillery. Thankfully, God raised up Reagan, whi crushed CCCP with finance and trade policy, there would be a necessary CCCP transition to CIS, and there has been reprieve.
***Useless, bloviating, browbeating, pointless straw argument commentating. It probably doesn’t even have much relevance to our discussion.

#2. NATO has not admitted a nation since 2004.
***So what? It makes little difference to me.

#3. While NATO has an “anyone is welcome to apply policy”, NATO membership requires UNANIMOUS CONSENT for membership, and several prominent EU nations have preemptively said no to Ukraine membership (multiple times), specifically because of the large 9 nation, Kremlin controlled CIS
***Please define CIS. It’s poor form to use an undefined acronym.

military threat, and it’s strong Beijing/Moscow alliance which has existed since 2009/2010, but now publically recognized in the past month.
***You’re maybe, possibly, imaginably going somewhere with this.

#4. Ukraine did begin the NATO “MAP” process required for all applicants, but didn’t apply for NATO membership until Russia took Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014.
***Again, you’re going somewhere, some tedious place, with all this....

After Moscow took the Donbass region and it’s rich resources, and Crimea, nearly 74% of the population wanted NATO membership, over double the number from 2008.
***MEGO: Mine Eyes Glaze Over.

Specific to this point,
***You haven’t really MADE a point yet.

Putin ignited public and subsequent political motivation in favor of NATO across Ukraine.
***Yeah, by invading it. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations
since the Russo-Ukrainian War and Annexation of Crimea, public support for Ukrainian membership in NATO has risen greatly..... 69% of Ukrainians want to join NATO, according to a June 2017 poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, compared to 28% support in 2012 when Yanukovych was in power.[24]

It is a detached individual and society which looks from a far off, and judges the people being bombed, rocketed, shelled, burned, eliminated, and their nation wiped out.
***Again: Somewhere in here you’re making a point. But your writing is so torturous I can’t even see your point. Take a writing class.

Interesting what fear and desperation can do to a population
***Perhaps I should have read your last sentence first. You seem to have just generated a bunch of stream-of-consciousness stuff without really much of a point.

[Rdct29]

I don’t believe these stories about Russia believing they would win the war in 1 to 3 days. That is just ridiculous.

[Zhang Fei]

[in each category, NATO was outnumbered anywhere from 8-10 to 1 ( or more), on a border which was only feet from CCCP. The only thing keeping Moscow from rapidly smashing all of Europe was MAD, and US nuclear artillery.]

---

That’s the theory. The question is how much of it was real, and how much of it was Operation Fortitude, but through corruption or the systematic under-reporting of problems rather than any intent to deceive the West. In other words, was the Warsaw Pact a Potemkin force? Milley rated the Russians as able to overrun Ukraine in 3 days on the strength of overhead imagery, sigint and presumably some humint. I’d say, at this stage, that nobody knows nothing about Russian capabilities. The question is whether anyone *knew* anything about Soviet capabilities, include the Soviet High Command. And by “knew”, I mean had a good, realistic grasp of.

[.44 Special]

Hold your water, partner. Times they are a-changing. But, one must seriously consider if our army would get of its ass without an OK from the CDC, permission from BLM, a note from the NEA, and at least several court orders from differing Federal district courts. Do we even know who our commander-in-chief is when when we don’t even know who controls the White House? Does the army have to consult Nancy Pelousy? What about EPA Climate Impact Studies on the effects of potential movement and action. Have Gender Impacts been assessed and do we have enough portable safe spaces for the troops.
On second thought it might be more effective if we sent the Boy Scouts - no that won’t work, Ed, just sit this one out.

[Cronos]

I didn't quite understand why And yet new material from Soviet archives suggests that some of the commentary may be more myth than reality:

The Japanese probably never saw the Germans as anything but useful idiots. While hitler seems to have saw them as "the great empire that hasn't been defeated for 2000 years" - fallen for Japanese "exoticism" imho

[Cronos]

The thing is = we’re not sure “Russia” wants to take Ukraine forcibly.

Putin wants to, but does the common person or even the oligarchs and military men want to take it forcibly? I doubt it - going by the muted response within Russia and within the ranks.

[Cronos]

well technically Russia ruled part of Poland for 123. The Germans and Austrians ruled the other parts of it.

The Polish-soviet war, the best book I’ve read on that is by Zamojski.

[ScottinVA]

“If Ukraine can inflict similar losses, Russia will leave.”

Those who believe the Ukrainians didn’t study and aren’t now implementing the guerrilla tactics of the Afghans and Iraqis are deluding themselves. Those of us who remember the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan remember the same refrain about the vaunted strength of the Russian military .. “it’s only a matter of time before the resistance is reduced to a remnant.” Well, we know how that turned out. A steady and determined resistance will wear the orcs down in time, and make their invasion something they’ll deeply regret.

[patriotfury]

In 1993, I was in a panel discussion with several retired Soviet (Russian) Generals on the North side of Moscow.

From NATO’s side, the “formal cold war” intel was actually very good.

The debate in our side wasn’t could they roll through Germany and France to the coast in approx 2-4 weeks. The debate on our side was what’s holding them back.

Apart from MAD, a significant number on our side believed it was our nuclear artillery, while the other half theorized it was MAD only.

However, the question really wasn’t about MAD, but rather if the Soviet’s didn’t go nuclear, and chose only to use armor and artillery, could we justify going strategic nuclear, which would have resulted MAD. This gaming and policy discussion was tricky.

On our side, there were at least a few who believed it possible Moscow could at any moment test us with their armor to see what our response would be. In such a test, they would begin by sending 2-3 armor brigades to learn our response. Of we didn’t respond with nuclear artillery, they had two options, ratchet up, or go all in.

We would then use nuclear artillery to halt Soviet armor, and the thinking by some was Moscow would perhaps not escalate to MAD, for their own preservation.

So a nuclear game of chicken -

Either way, they had the armor.ayne not enough tank drivers, but they had the armor.

We never knew why they never tested us, or went all in for sure, until 1993 (probably). The panel of Generals told us they knew we couldn’t stop them with NATO air, but they knew they would lose all.of their armor in a couple of days, because of our nuclear artillery, leaving the CCCP defenseless except for strategic weapons.

However, they had a lot of territory, and believed we could then take large areas of territory, with their only option to essentially nuke themselves to stop us.

This explanation was almost comical, but they were really afraid of our nuclear artillery regardless.

So the nuke artillery was the “conventional” blitzkrieg deterrent.

Craziness -

[ScottinVA]

“If Russia wants the Ukraine, they will take it”

What the Russians will “take” is death by a thousand cuts via an insurgency that will grind them down. The Ukraine Territorial Defense Force has been training for years for this moment. They have studied and learned successful guerrilla warfare tactics and are now employing them against Putin’s hordes. Putin expected Ukraine to simply roll over and submit to their occupation. With memories of life under the Soviet jackboot still fresh in their minds, the Ukes, well-armed through neighboring countries, will fight the invading orcs with every tactic available, and by all means necessary.

[Krosan]

“Milley rated the Russians as able to overrun Ukraine in 3 days”

Is there a link to him saying that?

[patriotfury]

Hey big guy, I only presented available historical information and policy.

There was no attack on you or anyone in particular.

And there was no attack verbage directed at you.

Those were general and corporate statements.

So no attack on you, or your talking points, period.

[Krosan]

The author Galeev says Ukraine can’t repeat the Afghanistan insurgence because there are no mountains and not even forests to hide in.

[PIF]

“Notwithstanding with its warlike image” and its wildly inaccurate accounting of Russian forces.

Russian Ground Forces number 280,000 active troops, not 850,000.
*Airborne = 45,000
*Spetsnaz = 20,000
Aerospace -VKF forces = 165,000
Navy = 160,000
Strategic Forces = 50,000
*other sources fold these two into the total of RGF for the 280,000 number. As a footnote, apparently there is even a lot of confusion within the Russian General Staff about the numbers
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF11603.pdf

Paramilitary Forces number around 6,000 not 250,0000
Russian navy consists of : 1 aircraft carrier (out of service and unlikely to sail again), 2 battle cruisers, 3 cruisers, 10 destroyers, 11 frigates, 81-83 corvettes, 21 landing ship tanks, 38 landing craft, 15 special-purpose ships, 3 patrol ships, 42 patrol boats, 49 mine countermeasures vessels, 12 special-purpose submarines, 58 active ballistic missile/cruise missile and attack submarines for a total of 348 vessels some of which are in the Black Sea

Many of the tracked vehicles listed are unserviced rusting hulks especially high maintenance tanks, many of which are antique T-64s.

The wild inaccuracies continue with all categories

[ScottinVA]

There are mountains and forests in the western region of the country, through which the arms assistance will flow.

The Ukes know every square centimeter of their country and most certainly have taken whatever steps are necessary to mitigate the geographic challenges.

[PIF]

That’s the theory. The question is how much of it was real,
—
It was not a theory - it was a fact - I sat across from 4 fully mechanized Russian Armies (400,000 troops, 35,000 tanks) at 4km in West Germany and monitored them continually. It was 72 hours for the Russians to arrive at the English Channel AFTER tactical nukes were used.

Operation Fortitude took place during WWII, not during the Cold War. Gen. Milley couldn’t rate used underwear.