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

[dennisw]

btt

[maddog55]

If we had functional intelligence agencies we’d know these things.

Maybe it’s just Russian collision.

[dennisw]

Thanks for taking the time to do all that copy and paste .... I went to the original twitter too :) Very interesting take on things. Russia as a thug/gangster/crook run nation.

[Justa]

I spent a year with armed forces of former Warsaw pact nations in Iraq. From what I was told the reason the Soviet Union never attacked the West was because Soviet leadership was not certain the Warsaw pact would fight for the CCCP or against it.

The present example of the Belarus military and some of the Stans seem to reinforce this.

One of the reasons the convoy outside Kiev isn’t moving is because Belarus rail workers have refused to move the Russian supply trains.

[Krosan]

Everything Kamil Galeev writes is extremely interesting. He seems to know a lot and maybe his specialization of history between 1400-1800 makes this his moment because Russia looks to be stuck in that era.

[Cecily]

“Russia as a thug/gangster/crook run nation.”

That is why all the posts from the Putinistas here regarding Vlad going into Ukraine to clean up all the corruption are so absurd and laughable. No, he and his cronies will just replace Ukraine corruption and criminality with their own version of the same.

[SES1066]

Thanks! More informative than what is in our media (shocked face)!

[BradyLS]

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

Ukraine and Texas are as good as equal in land mass. Ukraine's population is 40million to Texas' 30million. If Texas were an independent republic that Biden wanted to take, I can't imagine it being subdued in six months.

I don't know what Putin expected or is expecting. I don't trust anything in the news from either side about it.

[bert]

There is a lot of blather describing the problem but the root cause can be summed up in only one word.......... corruption

Corruption has prevented Mother Russia from enjoying good health simply every thing, all aspects of vitality, are sucked off by corruption.

The same condition prevails in the American City States where democrat corruption, especially Black corruption, is now the prevailing political order. American corruption is the cancer rotting the hearts of what were once great cities.

[TimSkalaBim]

1) Russia will learn from its mistakes.
2) The U.S. will ignore the lesson that corruption undermines institutions.

[patriotfury]

Thank you for your sacrifice.

Yep, I been deployed with CENTCOM multiple times... multiple missions -

In fact I wish I could proclaim the truth about why we were really there, and of what we really ran into. It’s all game changer stuff, and would shock the world.

I guess that is part of the problem, being when the narrative is only lies, and repeated generationally, no one would accept the truth.

Before I was in uniform, I spent most of a decade in primarily Moscow, but have spent significant time all over Eastern Europe, and Central.

Ironic, decades later I was attached to EUCOM, only the last time it was Molesworth jac. (I just gave it away)

Didn’t get into it before, but also in 1993, we met with a handful of WWII Generals in Moscow, who had been all over the Eastern Front.

They were not all Russian, but from various countries taken over due to Roosevelt’s horrific “Great Compromise”.

As well, prefacing they too were not sure how it would have gone, but pretty much stated they all believed they had lost the Eastern Front, they were all going to die, and that they had maybe a couple days left without food (already eating trees and junk), and had even less ammunition - when we broke through, and basically saved them. There was discussion on this point.

You should have heard the stories from the region, including from the Black Sea as we rolled in on the Germans to help the Russians.

It is hard to know to know the truth really, as I know Stalin did indeed purge most officers, beginning toward the end of WWII, and immediately following WWII), but these guys basically stated if we had not stopped in Berlin, and we had pushed through to Moscow, they would have fallen in, and recognized our officers as theirs.

That seems to be some historical confirmation...

Now of course this is being told in 1993, but a few of them spoke of the heinous barbarian, genocidal type activity they had faced before WWII under Stalin, and there was great fear by most in society.

Of course we know this to be true from many sources.

However, they also indicated Berlin was the window, and at that time it would have worked for unprecedented historical reasons, for us to keep going, and we were wrong not to go after Stalin and the Supreme Soviet immediately.

I believe they were right.

That being said, while we had the nuclear and nuclear delivery advantage into the mid 1950’s, there is no question they passed us up, and Moscow came down with an iron fist across the entire Warsaw Pact, to include wiping out religion, total cradle to grave indoctrination of all younger generations, total societal dependency etc...

Even later, during the Korean War, we had the significant superiority in nuclear delivery air power, and after we took back back nearly all of NK in the East, Stalin threatened to nuke our troops. Of course MacArthur let Moscow know we could reach and nuke Moscow without them stopping us...

This is why Truman fired Macarthur.

But by then, there would not have been a capable ground game in Eastern Europe.

So basically, early on yes, we should have gone after the guy who was more brutal than Hitler, when they had been so utterly depleted in manpower, food, tools of war, and brutalized by their own totalitarian mass genocidal thug.

This would have arguably collapsed Mao in China early on as well, as Mao was propped up and supported by Moscow for some time, having been chosen by Lenin (1921-1922) to lead what they hoped would be Communist revolution not only in China, but all of Southeast Asia.

Roosevelt really blew it big time, and hundreds of millions paid the price, from Eastern Europe to East Asia.

This is the bigger story really.

Yah, compromising with evil is evil -

[Captain Peter Blood]

Exactly what is it you think Roosevelt could have done to prevent the Soviets from taking the Baltic countries and east Europe? I really don’t think we could have started another war at that time and done anything, frankly I think the Russian Army would have beaten us in the field. We had no stomach for any more war any more than they did.

[patriotfury]

Apologize for my grammer and spelling errors.

Was up all night, my eyes aren’t working, and this was sent from my little phone.

[patriotfury]

Read what was stated.

They had nothing left.

These WWII Gen officers were telling us they had nothing left, and would have fallen in.

What they were fighting with was often what we provided at the last minute.

Many historians from both Britain and Eastern Europe, placed their survival without us at weeks or even days.

These officers were telling bus the same from Moscow in 1993. They were done. They were going to die either from a German or a Russian, or were going to starve to death. And many did.

Stalin was by threat of death, pulling civilians from all over Central and Eastern Russia. It wasn’t just his army getting wiped out, the civilian population was getting wiped out. And there was little difference between them by thar point in history. No training, everyone fighting for their lives, mass starvation, etc...

I didn’t go into all the detail by far.

When you look at the numbers, US troop strength escalated parabolically all the way through WWII, while the Soviet’s were annihilated, with even the civilian population greatly reduced.

We were feeding them for years after as well.

As well, many people across the Warsaw Pact didn’t want to be under Stalin either. Some fought back very early on, but were erased.

There are monuments today, to some of these across Eastern Europe.

[patriotfury]

I am not going into it here, but there was great alchemy at play in Yalta, between 4FEB-11FEB, 1945.

The US and the world, will never recover from Yalta -

What really happened is mind numbing
https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Yalta_conference&redirect=no

*Alger Hiss was Soviet Agent
https://www.conservapedia.com/Alger_Hiss

[Captain Peter Blood]

Don’t think so, the Russians were not finished, but trying to get the West into another war would have been impossible, Britain was finished, all of them were, even we were tired of war. The experts be damned, we would have been fighting on their turf, threatening their homeland, they would have fought to the last man and woman.

[Captain Peter Blood]

I have read a great deal on Roosevelt and Yalta. Yes Hiss was an agent. Roosevelt was a dying man, but his mind was still clear enough. In addition he had Admiral Leahy with him , who was in fact, the unofficial acting President of the U.S., he had been doing his job and Roosevelts since the summer 1944. Few people knew this.

I suggest you read Nigel Hamilton’s three part books on Roosevelt as CIC. After a I read them I was more impressed by Roosevelt than I had been and Thank God he was running the war rather than anyone else.

We can be armchair QB’s all we want but I doubt there was little that could have been done to dissuade Stalin from what he wanted. Roosevelt was convinced he could charm him into doing what he wanted and that was a failure.

Admiral William Standley, who had been the Ambassador to Russia during the toughest part of the war tried to tell Roosevelt how handle Stalin and Molotov, but he would not listen. If Standley had been in charge there would have been a very different outcome, but Roosevelt did not even take Standley with him to Yalta.

[Hardastarboard]

Milley rated the Russians

I think I see the problem . . . .

[Lazamataz]

From what I know of Russian society, this missive reads true.

[Zhang Fei]

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

Is there a link to him saying that?]

---

Not specifically. The idea was the fall of Kiev would coincide with Zelensky’s capture and a rerun of Crimea’s capture in 2014:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-within-72-hours-if-russia-decides-to-invade-ukraine-sources

I shared Milley’s assessment, but am delighted to be wrong. At the same time, I’m not the one with the combined intel resources of three letter alphabet agencies with tens of billions of dollars in funding at his disposal. It was gross intel failure - they underestimated Ukraine and overestimated Russia. Still, if Putin himself had no clue, how would you expect any foreign intel agency to know?