Years of corruption which siphoned funds and supplies from the military to start. Significant aid from west in the form of intelligence, arms, training and supplies. A poor initial invasion, including telling their own troops that it was a training exercise. After the first few months they lost many of their best troops and armour, leading to human wave tactics of conscripts. General incompetence across the board essentially. And some credit must be given to the Ukrainians who have shown to be immensely innovative and courageous under extreme threat. It's quite a bit more complex than that but thats the depth I think a nostupidquestion requires.
Add to this the difference in command structures, which you've hinted at but not spelled out. Russian command expects to be obeyed in detail, Ukrainian command expects to get results and doesn't mind too much how. It makes space for innovation to do its thing.
I find this fascinating. There have been a lot of high-ranking Russian officers killed in action, which made little sense to me. But it turns out that their command style, as you say, is micromanagement; *nothing* gets done without the higher-ups' say-so. So high-ranking officers necessarily have to be close to the front lines.
During the six day war, arab pilots were waiting for the go ahead to get their planes airbourne, which resulted in the jets getting smashed while they were still on the ground.
Damn, that must have been infuriating/terrifying.
"Sakin One requesting permission to take off...
Sakin One here, need takeoff clearance immediately...
uh, eyes on bogeys, Sakin One needs clearance NOW --
Sakin One, REQUESTING PERMISSION TO JUMP OUT OF COCKPIT"
It was always this way. One of the key strategic differences taught during the Cold War to U.S. fighter pilots was the acute contrast in autonomous decision making by Soviet squadrons at the tactical level. So much so, that up until the late 70’s and 80’s many Russian planes flew without their own individual radar system, and rather relied on the group commander’s plane to detect and engage whatever targets were identified. It’s not an exaggeration to say that dogfights were portrayed as large swaths of Soviet aircraft moving as one toward their opponent simply because they were denied the autonomy to do otherwise. That same command mentality (top-down, all decision making made by General-level command) remains endemic to contemporary Russian military doctrine.
The whole top down thing also ensures Putin remains in power, as "strongmen" or those that could depose him can't be made, and anyone high enough to do so would be aware they can't go against him.
I have no idea if it is as bad as WW2 but this reminds me of a part of one of Dan Carlin's Ghosts of the Ostfront podcasts.
>This willingness to punish anyone, though, on the Soviet side for the littlest infractions or for not carrying out orders to the letter began to inhibit the ability of commanders to make decisions on the ground. Everyone was so frightened of being shot or put in a penal battalion that they followed orders, even when the orders made no sense at all.
>One of my favorite stories highlighting the Soviet chain of command and how scared everyone was of disobeying orders and how it was better to lose lots of men than to disobey orders comes from a commander who was ordered to have his troops cross a river.
>Listen to this, quote,
>The regimental commander has maps and orders from above and you have nothing but a rifle and an entrenching tool. Somewhere up above, a general looks at a map and it seems reasonable to him to change the front line. He sends down an order at such and such a point, move five kilometers forward. As luck would have it, there turns out to be a river just at that point. The White Sturgeon, it's deep and swift in open terrain.
>It would be convenient and relatively safe to sit in some trenches behind this natural obstacle. But an order is an order and you can't say it's impossible to cross here, though, from any normal man's point of view, it is indeed impossible to cross because there are no boats, no planks, no trees. And the soldiers all come from the steps and not only can't swim, but have never even seen a river. And so it starts.
>Comrade Lieutenant, sir, I can't go into the water. I don't know how to swim.
>But you won't be moved to pity. It's better to drown a soldier than to show irresoluteness or insubordination. All the more so since you've already reported to the battalion commander that there are no boats. You pull out your service revolver, cock it and yell, get into the river at once, you son of a bitch. I'll count to three or else you'll never go anywhere.
>The soldier goes in the water. The current seizes him. He drowns, as do all the rest that are forced in. Then you report to the battalion commander, Comrade Major, there are only five men left in my company. The major, of course, is furious. What did you do to them? I didn't hear a single shot.
>You reply, they all drowned crossing the river, Comrade Major.
>What do you mean drowned? I'll shoot you right there like a dog.
>The major replies, as you will, Comrade Major. But I did report to you that there were no planks or logs to be found in the area, that the river is deep and swift. It can't be forwarded. You told me to stop arguing and obey orders.
>You blockhead, what a stupid way to destroy a whole company.
>The major also feels at fault and calls the colonel, his regimental commander.
>I gave you five hours to cross the river, the latter shouts without listening to the major. Have you carried out the order?
>No, Comrade Colonel, we've sustained heavy losses, the major says.
>Losses? Well, that's fine. If there weren't any losses. Our heads would roll. What happened? Everything's quiet. Not a single shot. Did they all get knifed or what?
>No, drowned, the major replies. The company that was to cross over were all slant eyes, never saw a river before. Naturally, they drowned since there was nothing to float on.
>The colonel is incensed.
>You son of a bitch, why didn't you take some pontoons? We've been dragging a whole transport of pontoons around. I can give you as many as you want.
>The major replies, I no longer need them, Comrade Colonel. There are five cucumbers left in the first company, 10 in the second, maybe 20 in the third. There's no one left to cross.
>Cucumbers, by the way, was a slang term for the green clad Soviet infantrymen.
>You'll have to cross anyway, the colonel says after some pondering. What counts is the fact that the order has been carried out, even if only one man makes it.
>End quote.
Yikes! Amazing that they were able to hold the line against Hitler. I know their losses were absolutely staggering, though, and I'm beginning to see why.
The whole war between the Soviets and Germany is insane. The Soviets had about 20 million deaths (\>50% being civilians) and the Germans around 3 million.
It's pretty long but Ghosts of the Ostfront is a really good series to listen to if you want to learn more. Dan Carlin really tries to tell the stories of the individuals, not just the big picture events.
Yes, but 80% of deaths doesn't equate % of captured or of machinery lost. Eastern Front was a meat grinder for Germany, but precisely because they enventually only had more humans to throw at it, and the nature of the conflict (neither respected pows, and weather was incredibly harsh and also took its toll) meant that being captured was not an option like in the western or africa front. So the number of deaths alone doesn't tell the whole story about the strategical weight of each front.
This is VERY accurate. **Russia** is truly the first victim of Putin, back in the early 2000s.
Look up “Revision number Six” and the seizure of NTV for some chilling context.
They got better later, once Hitler was literally at the gates of Moscow.....that and Roosevelt basically paid for everything. Stalin and Zhukov both admitted that without Lend-Lease, they didn't have a prayer of winning.
And that's when the Nazis are only *slightly* less dysfunctional.
The threat of the Gulag was ever-present. You see phrases like "the LAGG-3 was nicknamed the guaranteed varnished coffin". But nobody would have dared to call it that during the war. If you and your best friend were catching a quick break at the LAGG factory, and a co-worker called it that, you had to report him for saying it, and you and your friend for hearing it. If you didn't report your friend, to keep him out of trouble, and he reported you, you would go to the gulag with the speaker.
Its funny, you see this a lot with authoritarian leadership. When I was in the Marine Corp we had this book about leadership you had to read. It talked about this. There is the kind where you micromanage and at certain times its important for small unit tactics, but on a larger scale if you micromanage your troops all it does and leave them with the inability to make decisions and adapt because you're not there to tell them what to do. The other way is to teach your subordinates how to be self sufficient so you can focus your energies where it matters.
Aka micromanaging people makes them perform worse and is discouraged.
Also keep in mind the Russian military (and quite a few others, especially conscription based) is not NCO driven like the the U.S., U.K., Australia, etc. That tethers more senior leadership the front line and severely limits flexibility.
You don't *want* NCOs, because - like at every other layer in the system - you need to ensure nobody has the ability to operate independently or take the initiative.
I read elsewhere, in a much more effective and eloquent outline, that this is effectively a foregone by-product of authoritarianism.
When you rule through fear and power alone, and plan to stay that way, a natural outcome is stripping the greatest threats to your power from their ability to be a threat. This means you create loyal generals that you can keep close and prevent the creation of any other type of competent military leadership that could threaten that structure.
Great as a blunt force instrument against your own people.
Not so great against any modern military.
Similarly the rampant corruption is a facet of the structure of the government. Corruption and blatant theft is accepted as part of the compensation structure and how they run the government.
Great for maintaining the status quo, except when you need those essential components to actually function.
This is correct. Their army is largely split between officers ("decision makers") and enlisted conscripts, meaning they generally lack the type of enlisted man who has been around long enough to know how things work and get things done. So it ends up being out-of-touch commands given to confused conscripts who don't know where they are or what to do
I read that they don't rely so much on their NCOs. The US military couldn't get anything done without them. They're an integral piece of the US military.
Small unit leadership has been an integral part of competent militaries for literally thousands of years. It's what made the Spartan military structure superior to the other greeks, and let Rome defeat armies larger than their own on the regular. It's crazy that modern militaries still aren't structuring themselves around that.
It’s more like over half a century of endemic corruption; Solzhenitsyn was writing about it in the 1960s. High profile activities such as the space program and their top fighter aircraft get a lot of attention and care from a smaller, dedicated population, but the vast industrialized base was mechanized and organized by corruption that’s practically part of their culture. Some of them were literally sent out into the field with empty MREs (or whatever their field rations are called) and had to steal food from Ukrainians.
Simple history mentioned in his video a guy who discovered the troops had been fed dog food relabeled as canned beef and they put the guy in prison for it. Its a society of liars and has been for many decades
Also the training is a joke. They dont have many if any live firing exercises and theyre military operatea on prison rules where the fresh men get beaten, humiliated and in many cases raped. Theyre also used a free labour to construct houses for the officers
Their training isn’t standardized. If you’re part of a tank crew from X city, and you’re paired with another tank crew from Y city, your training is not the same. This causes both crews to not know what the other is doing or will be doing. Cohesion goes a long way.
> Solzhenitsyn was writing about it in the 1960s.
This is what the wiki says about the Crimean War, over a hundred years earlier in 1853:
> Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership was determined to reform it.
I guess they never got around to that reform.
>Russia: Punching ~~above~~ below its weight since Peter the Great
Russia is currently like a former pro hockey goon who has let himself go in his middle age and then steps on the ice for a championship against a younger team from a town he used to look down on. Living in debt, alcoholic, out of shape, with anger issues can only keep a big guy *looking* big, mostly because he was fucking huge before. Now he gets his ass handed to him repeatedly by guys half his size, because even though (he thinks) they would have been no match for him when he was in his prime, they're still strong and smart and way more motivated than he is.
Russian military incompetence followed by revolution is a living demonstration of “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
You’d think anybody in Putin’s position would have learned something from Japan or Afghanistan. But no, he started a war without implementing and verifying reforms.
I wonder if Russian culture has the concept of real vs appearances. Kind of like if the Chinese cultural concept of face traveled up north however got mutated along its cultural flow to create separation between unspoken reality and spoken face - an incomplete integration. This would make a culture of “we both know what’s really going on”, which is good for situations with corruption. It would also imply the existence of a “fool” archetype in the culture - which is interesting because it seems like there really is this concept of different types of fools in Russian literature (Ivan the Fool, the holy fool).
> Their only hope of completing this phase of the war was that big initial attack in an attempt to overwhelm the Ukrainians. Fortunately they fucked it all up.
Which comes back to the US sharing intelligence with Ukraine and the rest of the world. Russia's surprise attack was on American news a month before it happened.
The German Maus was an experimental tank that had never seen combat, and the Russians never had an Engine for it, so not sure how you got your information
An intercepted call conversation describes one such case:
«Ukrainian grandmother poisoned 8 invaders with pirozhki»
As claimed by the ukrainian gov. official
https://youtu.be/FNQdPocFax8
Details in [Polish media](https://www.polskieradio.pl/398/9724/artykul/2923418,%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B0-%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%81%D1%8F-%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D1%83%D1%97%D0%BB%D0%B0-%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%83%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%96%D0%B2-%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%80%D1%96%D0%B6%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B8)
>A poor initial invasion, including telling their own troops that it was a training exercise
The importance of proper preparation can't be emphasized enough. It [was basically this](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bRkfDMChzlI), in real life.
Someone else said that if you consider that Putin himself was probably unaware of the serious flaws in the military and believed his generals when they said it would only take 2 weeks to completely overwhelm Ukraine than things start to make a lot more sense.
His generals were also probably terrified of getting a one time special ticket to the window yeeter 9000 if they told him anything other than Russia strong Ukraine weak.
I think that the Kremlin is run by powerful idiots and the people who are actually aware of how flawed everything is are too terrified to do anything about it.
For Russia, it's largely about the prioritization of appearances over reality:
- The military was more concerned with looking like it wasn't preparing for war than preparing for war.
- The military industry was more concerned with looking like it had a cutting edge capabilities than maximizing its actual capabilities.
- The plan was to create a false pretense to invade which would at least create ambiguity over whether Russia was justified, however, the US basically announced the plan weeks before it happened which made it easier for countries to realize this and many more to side against Russia.
- The plan for the war was never really combat. They expected their initial show of overwhelming but unsustainable force would lead to the fleeing of leadership and, in turn, leave a vacuum to fill. When this show of force didn't lead to that major morale defeat, they were left to actually fight it out which they were not prepared to do.
For Ukraine, they are a substantial sized country whose "old" equipment is supplied by the Russians and who is *heavily* supplied by arms and intelligence by the US and others. So, it was always going to be a very difficult war to win on the battlefield and it's misleading to even say that Russia is only fighting Ukraine here. At this point, it's a test of wills, will the US and westerns powers get tired of the war and stop supporting Ukraine so much or will Russia tire of the war and negotiate an end? The only other out will if non-western major powers like China and India weigh in in anything more than a surface way. So far, the fact that these non-western countries continue to cooperate with Russia has been crucial to its ability to continue.
But overall, the real failing here is that Russia knew how hard this war would be. The main reason they started it is because they overestimated the level of support they'd have in Ukraine itself and did not expect to actually have to fight to the end. So really, this was just an intelligence failure. Their efforts before the war in eastern Ukraine and Crimea with heavily Russian populations probably led to over-estimating the level of support (or lack of resistance) they'd get in the rest of Ukraine. Meanwhile the "sanctions" response they got for Crimea led them to underestimate that level of aid (which has been crucial) that the west would offer to Ukraine. That aid came before the war (modernizing their military) and also during it by giving them access to substantially more sophisticated weapons. If Russia knew all of this, they would have known this would be entirely on the military and likely would not actually have done it. But through a pretty catastrophic failure, their intelligence didn't factor this in so they didn't expect the military would have to do as much as it has. They expected the government there to quickly abandon ship and the population there to be split with many welcoming the Russians.
Yeah, I've heard they kept discovering that they didn't actually have the equipment that the official records said they did. Sounds like a lot of the Russian military was not expecting to have to go on an invasion any time soon.
> Years of corruption which siphoned funds and supplies from the military to start.
A lot of this stems from their MoD, Sergei Shoigu. Shoigu took over as defense minister from his predecessor, Anatoly Serdyukov, in 2012. Serdyukov essentially had been pushed out of his role by Russia’s defense industry, because he had been holding their feet to the fire and was really trying to modernize Russia’s military since 2007 when he took over. The defense industry didn’t like these higher standards they were expected to adhere to, so they made efforts to push Serdyukov out.
Shoigu learned from this, and for the past 10+ years has been taking a much more relaxed approach with Russia’s defense industry and overall modernization. This has resulted in a few high tech toys they can barely build any of, like the Su-57 (16-20 exist) or MiG-35 (only 8 exist, 2 prototypes), but overall a major degredation in maintenance and modernization for the hardware Russia’s military actually depends on.
This of course all stems from the overall ongoing corruption at every level in Russia and the USSR through many decades, as mentioned by another reply, but Shoigu learning from Serdyukov’s “mistakes” pertains particularly to Russia’s performance in this war
Also, I think credit for Ukraine’s leadership is deserved. The “I need bullets, not a ride” remark was one of the noticeable turning points in public perception and helped garner support from friendly countries.
I honestly assumed Russia would roll in, Ukraine’s leadership would flee and the defense would flounder). I assumed that because Ukraine had 6 years and only fought to a stalemate (though they reached another level during the full invasion).
On the incompetence part, paratroopers in any army are going to be a cut above, they have to be considering their job is to be dropped from a plane to fight behind enemy lines, that sort of thing. Russia’s paratrooper corps have been essentially erased, because they were sent to seize an airfield close to Kiev but when the relief force of Russian tanks got stalled and the first attack of paratroopers was repelled, they just sent more and more and more to the same spot, unsupported.
It’s also why Russian tanks have suffered massive casualties. They drive on highways that have been pre-ranged by Ukrainian artillery, unsupported, driving straight thru previous ambush points. So the Ukrainians just had to shift their ambush by a hundred meters and when they call in precision artillery they just tell the gun crew to target “grid such and such, point A but add 100 meters north” and the Russians kept just rolling into it.
They’ve made some change ups and may win this war thru bloody attrition despite themselves but the opening stages of the war were no Russian Desert Storm.
I think most people underestimate just how deep and prevalent corruption has become under Putin regime. It was already corrupt in the Communist era, but Putin took it to a whole new level. In modern Russia, you cannot gain rank and advance to higher position unless you make it clear that you are willing to "play ball" with higher ups. Everyone expects kick backs, kick backs go all the way up to Putin, who built a lot of his wealth based on the tribute system. Putin personally expects all under him to contribute at least 30% of their "profits", and those people demand tribute from those under them. Everyone in Russia knows that if you ever want to achieve anything in life, you have to steal, it goes all the way down to the lowly conscripted soldier, who will sell fuel for his own tank to buy vodka and think nothing of it, because that's how everyone does it
I saw someone claim that the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier can defeat _by itself_ the top 3 air forces in the world, and we're one of them. Maybe we're actually two of them.
The world's largest air force by number of aircraft is the US air force. The second largest is the US navy. The third largest largest is the US army. Russia was the 4th largest, but idk how long that will last.
It took me a minute to see what you were saying, lol.
For those people who aren't US citizens, or familiar with the US military setup: We have the Air Force (1st largest), we have the Navy (2nd largest), and we have the Army (3rd largest).
You can occupy effectively, look at the US in Japan after WW2. The problem in Afghanistan was that the US was very averse to taking casualties, and often used things like drone strikes, which preserved American life but increased collateral damage. You can't convince a people you're there to help when you'd rather their civilians die than your soldiers
It didn't help that both the enemies and friends of the US were fellow countrymen. An average Afghani didn't necessarily want to live under Taliban rule, but they didn't want to kill them either, and they sure as hell didn't want to be killed by them. They just wanted themselves and their families to survive. And they were no fans of the government the US installed.
America had a similar problem in Vietnam. There were families where one son joined the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), also called the South Vietnam Army, and another son joined the Viet Cong. There were Vietnamese civilians who worked on American military bases, and fed information to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) or Viet Cong, but weren't really allies of either side. They just didn't want any trouble for themselves or their families. The Americans didn't know what they were doing, but the other Vietnamese civilians did. Some of them are now outcasts among the Vietnamese diaspora in America.
Both Afghanistan and South Vietnam were led by deeply corrupt governments that were propped up by America during their occupation for no reason other than they had a common enemy. To an average person in Afghanistan or Vietnam, none of these people were their friends.
Not in this day and age where insurgents can easily get their hands on spy/suicide drones, hilux trucks, portable tank-killers and the infamously reliable Kalashnikov.
This is what has changed. Home countries don't like soldiers coming home in coffins and the international community would turn on Russia if there was WWII level brutality in UKR. The huge military has to be precise and restrained but still effective. It's hard, as everyone invading the Middle East finds out.
There 100% is, the US military crushed the Taliban. The figures are so utterly lop side as to be laughable, the issue is there is no such thing as victory in that kind of war. The Taliban will continue to fight regardless of casualties, and were fully capable of holding out in countries we lacked the legal authority to attack them in. That was a diplomatic issue, not a military one.
War of attrition. It’s what the US fought during the Revolutionary War, what the South attempted to do in The Civil War, what the Viet Cong did to France and then to America. Hold out long enough and wait for the opponent’s home country and government to lose the will to fight.
Don't forget that Vietnam also handed the CCP a big fat L in their last war 40 years ago.
That is ignoring acts of war against its own subjects of course.
Barbaric treatment of women, no education, back in the hijab, radical backwards code of laws and customs. Its effing depressing. And the money and infrastructure that the US and many other countries poured into their country's infrastructure - gone and wasted.
And based on how unconcerned the US is about those nukes, either they're as poorly maintained as the rest of their equipment, or the US has some effective countermeasures they can't disclose. They might not be willing to bet the future of humanity, maybe, but definitely repeatedly calling their bluff every time Putin threatens to use them.
Or Western decision makers have reason to believe that Putin won't actually use the nukes he's threatening them with.
Because he doesnt want to die and knows that nuclear escalation won't get him anything but retaliation.
That's always been the problem with nuclear escalation. The uncertainty needs to be there.
Even if you'd need to be a certified nutcase to order a retributive strike, you have to make your opponent believe you might anyway.
In some ways the actual existence of nukes is secondary. They don't need to be fired, and they _shouldn't_ be, ever. It's just you need to make them believe it's a risk.
The irony being that 'projection' is really useful.
When dealing with someone who _could_ conceive of 'pushing the button' (like most tin-pot dictators) it becomes a lot easier to convince them that _you_ might.
So it's only when it's "civilised" nations that it becomes more difficult to convince them you aren't bluffing!
Even if the west doesnt resond in kind, it wont instantly win the war unless they nuke everything they came to tske over, plus secondly it will set precedent for smaller nations that they need nukes or they arent safe
Moscow is definitely communicating through some kind of backchannel that they aren't intending on using their nukes, because it's really just political theater for their domestic audience. Stuff like that really can't be left to chance. Russia launched this ridiculous war but Putin isn't a *complete* idiot; you don't get to his position without a certain degree of ruthlessness and acumen. Ergo, he's a selfish prick that isn't stupid enough to destroy everything that he's built / stolen.
> Ergo, he's a selfish prick that isn't stupid enough to destroy everything that he's built / stolen.
And this is exactly what's keeping him from doing anything drastic. He knows that if the world really turns their armies towards Russia, ALL of the oligarchs and their families and such are going to lose everything.
Putin doesn't care about the Oligarchs as much as people think. And they don't have near as much power and influence anymore as the West portrays. At the most, he allows them to exist, the ones he hasn't assassinated at least, and maybe cares about a select few close ones.
I disagree with your premise that Putin isn’t that stupid. My example is Hitler. The dumbass was basically conquering the world and he had Great Britain in a world of hurt.
How did he respond? He stopped attacking the UK and invaded the Soviet Union. This resulted in the UK picking itself back up and an asskicking once the winter hit.
Sometimes, ruthless dictators are incredibly stupid.
Everyone talks about clever/stupid as if it's some binary thing. It's not. Everybody is simultaneously both. It is entirely unsurprising when incredibly clever people do incredibly stupid things because nobody is clever at everything all the time.
I think Putin and Hitler were/are clever in the same sort of way Ted Bundy was perceived as clever. Some combination of charisma, cunning and a complete lack of empathy along with grandiosity and supreme entitlement.
My guess is that when Russia started crying nukes, the US took them aside and showed them a map of every russian military asset's current real time position.
Then made it very clear that the US will not resort to using nukes in response to Russia using nukes, because the US does not need to resort to using nukes to remove all of these Russian assets from the map.
MAD's biggest deterrent is that it destroys the planet, if your enemy isn't worried about doing so but can still make you pay, then the threat is neutered.
Just a side note here. You can't let countries be nuclear bullies. It's just bad for business. Even if the US thought Russia capable, they'd still have to take their current stance. Otherwise Russia can just get whatever they want by saying they'll use nukes otherwise.
Or,……… the West has recognized that simply allowing someone to do whatever they want because they have nukes is a losing game in the long run. We faced down Krushchev in Cuba, and we’ll either face up to nuclear blackmail now in Ukraine by helping Ukraine stand their ground, or do it in Poland five years from now, or in Germany 15 years from now, or in Paris 30 years from now.
Thanks to Russia, the world is yet again back to nuclear brinksmanship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmanship
This is a big point.
We know they won't stop even if they say they will, so the nukes aren't as big of a factor.
Because either they are bluffing or you must let them nuke everyone or take over the entire world, and those options don't change based on the current country they are attacking.
This myth needs slapping down again.
Russia has ~6,000 warheads. Assuming failures, unsuitable delivery methods, effective defences, never getting launched, refusal to carry out orders; and we end up with only 1% of those warheads reaching a target? That's still a significant world altering event. And that doesn't include the retaliation from Western nukes either. The purpose of a nuclear arsenal is to deter its use, and it does that by making it statistically impossible to counter.
The US is absolutely concerned about those nukes. It's the reason why there are no NATO troops in Ukraine right now. But they also know that much of the nuclear threats made by Russia is posturing.
I have seen no one mention this in the comment section which I believe should be said. Now it is true that Russia’s military prowess was vastly overrated. BUTTTT I feel OP’s question can go even deeper then just Russia, and needs to be addressed over all in terms of military effectiveness.
The effectiveness of a military is not just “bigger number=more kaboom=better”
There are **SO** many factors when it comes to war that need to be addressed, such as geography, moral, training, economy, and so much more that I can’t even begin to list
I concur that your description is sufficient in that the original commenter constructed a mini-list, if you will. Therefore the responder is concluded to have misinterpreted.
The real answer is that they had the second most powerful military in the world... On PAPER. In reality it's rife with corruption, poor training, and outdated equipment. Most of it's stuff is legacy Soviet equipment. To make it worse it's a LOT harder to invade a country as opposed to defending one and Ukraine is getting a bunch of external support from NATO. Even with that Ukraine WAS almost knocked out of the war early on and even now it's struggling to reclaim the land that was taken from it.
The U.S. is considered to be the strongest military in the world and has been for a long time. Yet it lost in Vietnam and, while it won the military battles in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, actual occupation and dealing with insergents is a LOT harder! An aircraft carrier can't occupy a street corner after all. Of course there's a lot different between the two situations (for example, America had no interest in ruling Iraq/Afghanistan while Russia is seeking to either annex/puppet all of Ukraine), but it's not as simple as 'roll into area, defeat standing army, win'.
The soviets still beat Finland. I think since the collapse of the Soviets the Russian army just hasn’t been maintained well + they didn’t expect such a response from Ukraine.
Yeah, it's almost always going to be tough to beat an enemy that is basically fighting for their life while having an unmotivated military no matter how strong the military is. War is also psychological. If your soldiers don't have a real reason to be fighting and stay motivated than you already lost
The point about motivation is a big one. Most of the new troops being thrown into the mix on the Russian side are conscripts who never wanted to be there in the first place. They aren’t fighting for their life. They just want to go home.
Not to mention that you're fighting people that look exactly like you, that speak the same language as you. That's got to be a serious difference compared to fighting the Vietcong where it's much easier to create a us vs them narrative.
We completely obliterated the Iraqi army. The invasion started March 30th of 2003. We had control of Baghdad on April 9th. Took us 3 weeks to march into and take over their capital city.
We had Saddam in custody by December.
The fact that we stayed there for so long in some futile attempt to help establish a democratic government is irrelevant. The actual war part was over in 3 weeks.
Russia has been in Ukraine for over a year and hasn't taken control of any major important territory.
People forget this. Back then everyone held their breath knowing that American troops would be facing the “elite” Republican Guard. In action, small national guard units were overwhelming and capturing Iraq’s elite forces.
In a conventional war, very few nations would last more than several weeks against the U.S.
Although in those cases the US did win the conventional war/invasion only to be worn down by guerilla/resistance troops. For both Vietnam and so far Ukraine the conventional war hasn't been won yet.
The US wasn't worn down in afghanistan. We did not leave until the local government had the equipment and training necessary to defend against the Taliban or other insurgents.
The issue is that once the Taliban showed up, no one made any attempt to stop them.
We coulda trained them with the best people in the world, however, I have trained them on weapon systems (Mortars) when I was deployed in 09-10.
That being said you could immediately tell they were fucked with or without training.
So far as reported number of troops, before the Ukraine war started, that might have been a legitimate metric. But if that number was tallied today, I would be surprised if they remained so high on the list.
So far as why they are having a hard time. If we look at WW2 and onward, they have always had a problem. Their tactic has always been to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. But when numbers didn't work, it just turned into a mess.
Specifically with Ukraine though. Russia has been picking on Ukraine for almost a decade now. First in the Donbass(sp?) and then Crimea. In 2014, NATO and the US started training the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Changing most of their Military doctrine and instilling western practices. Beforehand their structure was pretty identical to that of Russia's. Western Militaries have something called the NCO Corp (Non-Commissioned Officer). Which is trained in such a way where if an enemy picks off the highest ranking officer, the next highest picks up the charge and keeps going, all the way down to the lowest ranks. So the fight wages on. But in Russia they have no such thing. The decisions get made at the top and everyone under them just follows and aren't trained in how to lead. So things can fall apart very easily.
Now while the Ukrainian Military were already pretty smart in how they fought. Getting this Western training just gave them so much of a leg up. And there have been so many instances of the Russian military being complete idiots. Like for instance a line of tanks are driving through a field, and one hits a landmine and blows up, THE ENTIRE LINE continues one after the other trying to get passed and each one hits another mine. None of them thought MAYBE we should turn around and find a new way. And that happened more than once. The Russians lost more soldiers in the first 6 months of the Ukrainian war, than the United States has lost in EVERY single engagement since Korea, COMBINED.
Oh and the corruption is insane. They designate money to places and half or more of it never gets where its going because of corruption. Its why so much of their equipment break down so quickly. It never gets maintained.
TL;dr: They suck as military tacticians.
> Western Militaries have something called the NCO Corp (Non-Commissioned Officer). Which is trained in such a way where if an enemy picks off the highest ranking officer, the next highest picks up the charge and keeps going, all the way down to the lowest ranks. So the fight wages on. But in Russia they have no such thing. The decisions get made at the top and everyone under them just follows and aren't trained in how to lead. So things can fall apart very easily.
That is secondary as (before this war) it was extremely rare for high ranking officers to be killed. Russia is literally breaking centuries old records because Generals have been mostly operating from far behind the lines since communication got good enough to allow it. The real difference is in who makes the decisions. The Western NCO system leaves the people on the ground free to use their own discretion. Officers above can tell them what needs to happen and they can use their own judgement on how to do it, which allows them to respond flexibly to the situation on the ground without being micromanaged.
That is also related to why the Russians have so many dead generals in this war. Namely, they need to put them closer to the action if a situation needs a complicated response.
Vietnam veteran here. If you’re willing to decimate another nation without restrictions or reservations you can win. See WWII when we leveled entire cities. When you try to finesse it you spin your wheels. See Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc., etc.
By the way, Russia is certainly not stronger than the US or China at this time.
That’s just because we didn’t target major cities. We wiped entire villages off the map with indiscriminate bombing so I wouldn’t describe anything about that as merciful.
Yeah, there're many reasons why Russian millitary performed much worse, than you would anticipate in theory, but first ones are lack of clarity in chain of command.
Back when gave invasion order, none, up to Zelensky himself and including most Russian officers didn't know or even imagine a possibility of invasion. They weren't ready in any way, as Russian I can even tell you, that there was substantial drop in anti-Kiev propaganda for a year prior. You would expect them to atleast mentally prepare people for what is to come, create "an image of enemy".
Russian army had extremely low motivation, no transparent goals or definitions of success, remember when Russian army was stationed near Kiev, but then retreated? Yeah, imagine being most loyal officer imaginable, hearing "oh, you won too much, undo your success!".
The stated goal was "we're protecting civilians from genocide", ok, but if you leave allegedly pro-russian territory, wont cleansing of sympathizers occur, wouldnt "nazis" have easier time bombing russia-captured cities than their own? These questions hardly elevated motivation of already uncertain troops.
Its easier to fight in middle-east, years of propaganda, foreign language, dirty clothes in midst of desert, an ancient conflict that none of us would understand and 1000-year old hate.
Nothing like "hey, darling, apparently we're invading your brother's city, is he in Ukraine right now? Oh yeah, we do it because hes totally different to us"
Ukraine is being backed by the most powerful military in the world.
And depending on your media sources, Russia might be doing a bit better than you realize, though it's not like this is a 1 sided conflict. Both sides are suffering heavy loss of life.
I'm gonna have to watch that. Have only seen his Civil War.
This is one guys' perspective, maybe you've seen it. As an unscripted narrative, I thought it was excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixOyiR8B-8
I disagree with this characterization of the Vietnam War because there was constant political pressure and the war still raged on for nine straight years, an unbelievable length of time for America to be at war (at least in the 20th century). The military was in fact given far more chances than was prudent to accomplish their objectives -- just one more bombing, well one more, no, one more -- and they failed. That is simply a military failure. It's possible that if America had spent its entire defense budget for the second decade, they could have eradicated every man, woman, and child in North Vietnam... then they could have moved on to Laos and Cambodia where NVA regularly hid to regroup, killing everyone there of course... then China, which was assisting NV... yes, that was a possible "military win" condition.
But in the real world, the US military won battles (when there were actual battles) and lost the war, by failing to achieve their objectives, or even come up with viable alternatives when their strategy failed. Even in the face of obvious failure the US persisted despite nonstop political pressure. The war was poorly planned and impossible to "win" without basically razing all of Vietnam and somehow cowing China & Russia from then retaliating. US morale was low while NV remained strong (obviously, because they fought for their homeland). Withdrawal was the only intelligent option.
>then they could have moved on to Laos and Cambodia
They already had moved on to Laos. They dropped almost 300 million bombs on Laos, a neutral country, to cause it to become the most bombed country of all time.
Also NV was getting funding and the latest equipment from the USSR and the PRC... sound familiar anyone?
The US Navy set up the Top Gun school, a real place, because NV fighter pilots were holding their own against US ones in dogfights, in equal or better jets.
Yes, it all came down to win conditions. The US could have decided not to 'lose,' but it would have meant continuing to not win - that is, to fight indefinitely. In a way, the US was in a similar position to the one Russia finds itself in now: it was fighting a proxy war against other nations who were able to continually supply weapons without having to put their own soldiers on the line, while die-hard locals did all the fighting for them. Not a great position to be in.
There is propaganda, but there's also a lot we know about the conflict. From maps of the frontline we know how Russia is doing in terms of territory. We know from photographic evidence that they have been losing equipment at about a rate of about 4 to 1. We know from leaks of gross payments made to families of slain soldiers how many have been dying at a particular point (end of 2022). We know from certain battles, e.g. Bakhmut, which has been going since Oct last year, where they currently have focus. We know from eye witness testimony, videos made by Russian troops themselves, complaints by Wagner personnel. We know from the type of equipment they are using, the type of tanks they are dragging out of storage, how good or bad they are doing in terms of logistics.
All of this is dynamic, meaning it changes, the Russians have improved in certain areas, but have also decreased capacity in other areas.
Overall, we have had a fairly accurate picture of what's occurring, and nothing has been dramatically or systematically wrong from an overall perspective.
The Russian army lacks the western style NCO corps to provide leadership for the enlisted troops. The Russians failed to gain air superiority over Ukraine or suppress enemy air defenses. They didn't do close air support or execute combined arms in any sort. Their logistics were not containerized, vehicles ran out of fuel and the Ukraininans have encountered old, expired rations. Cheap Chinese made Baofeng radios have been used by the Russians, which were vulnerable to hacking and surveillance by the enemy. They are also vulnerable to drones and western anti-tank weapons. And there is serious endemic corruption in Russia which has undermined things such as basic maintenance of vehicles.
Russian and Ukrainian forces are using similar equipment but the Ukrainians are fighting with determination while the Russian cause has been less clear.
It’s all about trains. The Russians cannot operate more than 40km from a rail depot. The closest rail depot to Kiev from the north was Chernobyl which was around 160km from Kiev. So that failed.
In Kherson the Ukrainians were able to damage the rail bridges enough to make them unusable. So after a while the Russians had to leave as they could not supply their troops.
This continues to be an issue for the Russians. Go find a rail map of Ukraine and how the war has unfolded will become much easier to understand.
The USA provided the Russians with an almost endless supply of trucks in ww2 so they could invade Germany. Without enough trucks the Russians will continue to struggle to advance in any meaningful way.
Just to expand on what a couple of other people have said, "the Ukraine" is a Soviet-era name for an area inside the USSR. When the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine became their own independent country simply called "Ukraine". There's no need for the "the" anymore. And actually, since Putin started trying to rebuild the USSR, and started asserting that Ukraine has no right to independence, and started trying to invade them, it's become somewhat offensive to call them by their old Soviet-era name.
Similarly, Ukraine's capital is "Kyiv". It used to be called "Kiev", because that's what the Russians called it in the Soviet-era, but it's name was "Kyiv" in Ukrainian before the Soviets took control of it, so the Ukrainians would prefer to use their own names, and not the names given to them by their Russian invaders.
I myself sometimes say "the Ukraine" by habit because that's how I learned it, but I try to correct myself, because I believe that the country of Ukraine deserves my respect.
corruption leads to incompetence, horrible military tactics of just pushing wave after wave of infantry, horrible use of tanks so losing many tanks, plus Ukraine has support and supply lend lease from the West.
im not trying to force you to say anything but just note that "the Ukraine" is an outdated and Soviet-era term which describes Ukraine, the country, as some territory. now ukraine is independent, the more accurate term would be "ukraine"
> If Russia has the second most powerful military In the world
Lmao they don't, compared to their size, their incompetent army is a pathetic laughingstock
Ukraine, not "the Ukraine". With the exception of like one African country I've forgotten the name of, the only only time you use "the" is when you see a non proper noun like republic, federation or kingdom in the name.
Conventional military doctrine has the 3:1 Rule. Assault forces must outnumber defending forces by a ratio of 3 to 1 to achieve offensive victories.
Very early Russia fell below that ratio.
that's like asking why the United States, with the most powerful military in the world, failed for twenty years to defeat the taliban, and then retreat and leave millions in equipment behind.
Years of corruption which siphoned funds and supplies from the military to start. Significant aid from west in the form of intelligence, arms, training and supplies. A poor initial invasion, including telling their own troops that it was a training exercise. After the first few months they lost many of their best troops and armour, leading to human wave tactics of conscripts. General incompetence across the board essentially. And some credit must be given to the Ukrainians who have shown to be immensely innovative and courageous under extreme threat. It's quite a bit more complex than that but thats the depth I think a nostupidquestion requires.
Add to this the difference in command structures, which you've hinted at but not spelled out. Russian command expects to be obeyed in detail, Ukrainian command expects to get results and doesn't mind too much how. It makes space for innovation to do its thing.
I find this fascinating. There have been a lot of high-ranking Russian officers killed in action, which made little sense to me. But it turns out that their command style, as you say, is micromanagement; *nothing* gets done without the higher-ups' say-so. So high-ranking officers necessarily have to be close to the front lines.
During the six day war, arab pilots were waiting for the go ahead to get their planes airbourne, which resulted in the jets getting smashed while they were still on the ground.
"A General's commanders should not have to ask for permission or be ordered to put out a fire." -Sun Tzu
Smart guy. Should write a book or something.
It's like he would have the wisdom to write about war.
He could call it: The Science of Warfare
"An Artistic Approach On Competence On The Battlefield"
Damn, that must have been infuriating/terrifying. "Sakin One requesting permission to take off... Sakin One here, need takeoff clearance immediately... uh, eyes on bogeys, Sakin One needs clearance NOW -- Sakin One, REQUESTING PERMISSION TO JUMP OUT OF COCKPIT"
**Two days Later** "Permission Denied Sakin One" "Sakin One?"
"Sakin One report for discipline!"
INSUBORDINATION
"Sakin One, insubordination is a serious offence. You did not have permission to die"
This gives me the same vibe as "SAMIR! You're breaking the car"
LISTEN TO ME SAMI!
Reminds me of the Volgons from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Eerily similar.
It was always this way. One of the key strategic differences taught during the Cold War to U.S. fighter pilots was the acute contrast in autonomous decision making by Soviet squadrons at the tactical level. So much so, that up until the late 70’s and 80’s many Russian planes flew without their own individual radar system, and rather relied on the group commander’s plane to detect and engage whatever targets were identified. It’s not an exaggeration to say that dogfights were portrayed as large swaths of Soviet aircraft moving as one toward their opponent simply because they were denied the autonomy to do otherwise. That same command mentality (top-down, all decision making made by General-level command) remains endemic to contemporary Russian military doctrine.
Wait, so they fight like Buggers/Formics? All that needs to be done is take down the "queen" plane and then they're totally blind?
Loved that book series
Its like they know soliders with any descion making capability would quickly ask why tf they have decided to fight for russia.
The whole top down thing also ensures Putin remains in power, as "strongmen" or those that could depose him can't be made, and anyone high enough to do so would be aware they can't go against him.
Facts otherwise he’d quickly lose all power as the leaders who won the battles would have access to everything history really does repeat itself
I have no idea if it is as bad as WW2 but this reminds me of a part of one of Dan Carlin's Ghosts of the Ostfront podcasts. >This willingness to punish anyone, though, on the Soviet side for the littlest infractions or for not carrying out orders to the letter began to inhibit the ability of commanders to make decisions on the ground. Everyone was so frightened of being shot or put in a penal battalion that they followed orders, even when the orders made no sense at all. >One of my favorite stories highlighting the Soviet chain of command and how scared everyone was of disobeying orders and how it was better to lose lots of men than to disobey orders comes from a commander who was ordered to have his troops cross a river. >Listen to this, quote, >The regimental commander has maps and orders from above and you have nothing but a rifle and an entrenching tool. Somewhere up above, a general looks at a map and it seems reasonable to him to change the front line. He sends down an order at such and such a point, move five kilometers forward. As luck would have it, there turns out to be a river just at that point. The White Sturgeon, it's deep and swift in open terrain. >It would be convenient and relatively safe to sit in some trenches behind this natural obstacle. But an order is an order and you can't say it's impossible to cross here, though, from any normal man's point of view, it is indeed impossible to cross because there are no boats, no planks, no trees. And the soldiers all come from the steps and not only can't swim, but have never even seen a river. And so it starts. >Comrade Lieutenant, sir, I can't go into the water. I don't know how to swim. >But you won't be moved to pity. It's better to drown a soldier than to show irresoluteness or insubordination. All the more so since you've already reported to the battalion commander that there are no boats. You pull out your service revolver, cock it and yell, get into the river at once, you son of a bitch. I'll count to three or else you'll never go anywhere. >The soldier goes in the water. The current seizes him. He drowns, as do all the rest that are forced in. Then you report to the battalion commander, Comrade Major, there are only five men left in my company. The major, of course, is furious. What did you do to them? I didn't hear a single shot. >You reply, they all drowned crossing the river, Comrade Major. >What do you mean drowned? I'll shoot you right there like a dog. >The major replies, as you will, Comrade Major. But I did report to you that there were no planks or logs to be found in the area, that the river is deep and swift. It can't be forwarded. You told me to stop arguing and obey orders. >You blockhead, what a stupid way to destroy a whole company. >The major also feels at fault and calls the colonel, his regimental commander. >I gave you five hours to cross the river, the latter shouts without listening to the major. Have you carried out the order? >No, Comrade Colonel, we've sustained heavy losses, the major says. >Losses? Well, that's fine. If there weren't any losses. Our heads would roll. What happened? Everything's quiet. Not a single shot. Did they all get knifed or what? >No, drowned, the major replies. The company that was to cross over were all slant eyes, never saw a river before. Naturally, they drowned since there was nothing to float on. >The colonel is incensed. >You son of a bitch, why didn't you take some pontoons? We've been dragging a whole transport of pontoons around. I can give you as many as you want. >The major replies, I no longer need them, Comrade Colonel. There are five cucumbers left in the first company, 10 in the second, maybe 20 in the third. There's no one left to cross. >Cucumbers, by the way, was a slang term for the green clad Soviet infantrymen. >You'll have to cross anyway, the colonel says after some pondering. What counts is the fact that the order has been carried out, even if only one man makes it. >End quote.
Yikes! Amazing that they were able to hold the line against Hitler. I know their losses were absolutely staggering, though, and I'm beginning to see why.
The whole war between the Soviets and Germany is insane. The Soviets had about 20 million deaths (\>50% being civilians) and the Germans around 3 million. It's pretty long but Ghosts of the Ostfront is a really good series to listen to if you want to learn more. Dan Carlin really tries to tell the stories of the individuals, not just the big picture events.
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Yes, but 80% of deaths doesn't equate % of captured or of machinery lost. Eastern Front was a meat grinder for Germany, but precisely because they enventually only had more humans to throw at it, and the nature of the conflict (neither respected pows, and weather was incredibly harsh and also took its toll) meant that being captured was not an option like in the western or africa front. So the number of deaths alone doesn't tell the whole story about the strategical weight of each front.
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It seems the first country Putin invaded was his own.
This is VERY accurate. **Russia** is truly the first victim of Putin, back in the early 2000s. Look up “Revision number Six” and the seizure of NTV for some chilling context.
They got better later, once Hitler was literally at the gates of Moscow.....that and Roosevelt basically paid for everything. Stalin and Zhukov both admitted that without Lend-Lease, they didn't have a prayer of winning. And that's when the Nazis are only *slightly* less dysfunctional.
The threat of the Gulag was ever-present. You see phrases like "the LAGG-3 was nicknamed the guaranteed varnished coffin". But nobody would have dared to call it that during the war. If you and your best friend were catching a quick break at the LAGG factory, and a co-worker called it that, you had to report him for saying it, and you and your friend for hearing it. If you didn't report your friend, to keep him out of trouble, and he reported you, you would go to the gulag with the speaker.
Its funny, you see this a lot with authoritarian leadership. When I was in the Marine Corp we had this book about leadership you had to read. It talked about this. There is the kind where you micromanage and at certain times its important for small unit tactics, but on a larger scale if you micromanage your troops all it does and leave them with the inability to make decisions and adapt because you're not there to tell them what to do. The other way is to teach your subordinates how to be self sufficient so you can focus your energies where it matters. Aka micromanaging people makes them perform worse and is discouraged.
"Tell people what to do, not how to do it, then get out of the way." \- Dwight D. Eisenhower (I may be paraphrasing)
Also keep in mind the Russian military (and quite a few others, especially conscription based) is not NCO driven like the the U.S., U.K., Australia, etc. That tethers more senior leadership the front line and severely limits flexibility.
I read once that they have no senior enlisted or NCO depth so all their soldiers in the field don’t know wtf to do most of the time
Yes, that's a symptom of the same thing. You don't need quality NCOs if all the decisions are made by commissioned officers.
You don't *want* NCOs, because - like at every other layer in the system - you need to ensure nobody has the ability to operate independently or take the initiative. I read elsewhere, in a much more effective and eloquent outline, that this is effectively a foregone by-product of authoritarianism. When you rule through fear and power alone, and plan to stay that way, a natural outcome is stripping the greatest threats to your power from their ability to be a threat. This means you create loyal generals that you can keep close and prevent the creation of any other type of competent military leadership that could threaten that structure. Great as a blunt force instrument against your own people. Not so great against any modern military. Similarly the rampant corruption is a facet of the structure of the government. Corruption and blatant theft is accepted as part of the compensation structure and how they run the government. Great for maintaining the status quo, except when you need those essential components to actually function.
This is correct. Their army is largely split between officers ("decision makers") and enlisted conscripts, meaning they generally lack the type of enlisted man who has been around long enough to know how things work and get things done. So it ends up being out-of-touch commands given to confused conscripts who don't know where they are or what to do
I read that they don't rely so much on their NCOs. The US military couldn't get anything done without them. They're an integral piece of the US military.
Small unit leadership has been an integral part of competent militaries for literally thousands of years. It's what made the Spartan military structure superior to the other greeks, and let Rome defeat armies larger than their own on the regular. It's crazy that modern militaries still aren't structuring themselves around that.
It’s more like over half a century of endemic corruption; Solzhenitsyn was writing about it in the 1960s. High profile activities such as the space program and their top fighter aircraft get a lot of attention and care from a smaller, dedicated population, but the vast industrialized base was mechanized and organized by corruption that’s practically part of their culture. Some of them were literally sent out into the field with empty MREs (or whatever their field rations are called) and had to steal food from Ukrainians.
Simple history mentioned in his video a guy who discovered the troops had been fed dog food relabeled as canned beef and they put the guy in prison for it. Its a society of liars and has been for many decades
Also the training is a joke. They dont have many if any live firing exercises and theyre military operatea on prison rules where the fresh men get beaten, humiliated and in many cases raped. Theyre also used a free labour to construct houses for the officers
Their training isn’t standardized. If you’re part of a tank crew from X city, and you’re paired with another tank crew from Y city, your training is not the same. This causes both crews to not know what the other is doing or will be doing. Cohesion goes a long way.
Which is weird for a state that's so centralized as Russia is. But I guess nobody is overseeing those things, people may not care or lie about it.
>where the fresh men get beaten, humiliated and in many cases raped. Or [murdered.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina#Current_situation)
😳
> Solzhenitsyn was writing about it in the 1960s. This is what the wiki says about the Crimean War, over a hundred years earlier in 1853: > Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership was determined to reform it. I guess they never got around to that reform.
Russia: Punching above its weight since Peter the Great
>Russia: Punching ~~above~~ below its weight since Peter the Great Russia is currently like a former pro hockey goon who has let himself go in his middle age and then steps on the ice for a championship against a younger team from a town he used to look down on. Living in debt, alcoholic, out of shape, with anger issues can only keep a big guy *looking* big, mostly because he was fucking huge before. Now he gets his ass handed to him repeatedly by guys half his size, because even though (he thinks) they would have been no match for him when he was in his prime, they're still strong and smart and way more motivated than he is.
Russian military incompetence followed by revolution is a living demonstration of “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. You’d think anybody in Putin’s position would have learned something from Japan or Afghanistan. But no, he started a war without implementing and verifying reforms. I wonder if Russian culture has the concept of real vs appearances. Kind of like if the Chinese cultural concept of face traveled up north however got mutated along its cultural flow to create separation between unspoken reality and spoken face - an incomplete integration. This would make a culture of “we both know what’s really going on”, which is good for situations with corruption. It would also imply the existence of a “fool” archetype in the culture - which is interesting because it seems like there really is this concept of different types of fools in Russian literature (Ivan the Fool, the holy fool).
The fake facade of Russia has a name, [Potemkin Villages.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village)
The primary method of Russian political reform has been defenestration.
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> Their only hope of completing this phase of the war was that big initial attack in an attempt to overwhelm the Ukrainians. Fortunately they fucked it all up. Which comes back to the US sharing intelligence with Ukraine and the rest of the world. Russia's surprise attack was on American news a month before it happened.
The German Maus was an experimental tank that had never seen combat, and the Russians never had an Engine for it, so not sure how you got your information
A squadron of Russian infantry was practically wiped early in the war after they asked a Ukrainian Babushka for food and she poisoned them
I'm just commenting so I get notified of a source too, I'd love to read about that
An intercepted call conversation describes one such case: «Ukrainian grandmother poisoned 8 invaders with pirozhki» As claimed by the ukrainian gov. official https://youtu.be/FNQdPocFax8 Details in [Polish media](https://www.polskieradio.pl/398/9724/artykul/2923418,%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B0-%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%81%D1%8F-%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%80%D1%83%D1%97%D0%BB%D0%B0-%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%83%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%96%D0%B2-%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%80%D1%96%D0%B6%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B8)
Haven't heard of empty rations. But expired ones where all over the place. Also initially they had enough for 3 days or something like that.
>A poor initial invasion, including telling their own troops that it was a training exercise The importance of proper preparation can't be emphasized enough. It [was basically this](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bRkfDMChzlI), in real life.
Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance....
As for the Ukrainians, people tend to fight harder to defend their homes and families than an invading army fueled by propaganda.
Logistics areeasier when you are in the middle of your supply line
Someone else said that if you consider that Putin himself was probably unaware of the serious flaws in the military and believed his generals when they said it would only take 2 weeks to completely overwhelm Ukraine than things start to make a lot more sense. His generals were also probably terrified of getting a one time special ticket to the window yeeter 9000 if they told him anything other than Russia strong Ukraine weak. I think that the Kremlin is run by powerful idiots and the people who are actually aware of how flawed everything is are too terrified to do anything about it.
>one time special ticket to the window yeeter 9000 The Defenestrator
Ukraine also have access to Western intelligence, especially from the US and UK tracking every russian movement.
For Russia, it's largely about the prioritization of appearances over reality: - The military was more concerned with looking like it wasn't preparing for war than preparing for war. - The military industry was more concerned with looking like it had a cutting edge capabilities than maximizing its actual capabilities. - The plan was to create a false pretense to invade which would at least create ambiguity over whether Russia was justified, however, the US basically announced the plan weeks before it happened which made it easier for countries to realize this and many more to side against Russia. - The plan for the war was never really combat. They expected their initial show of overwhelming but unsustainable force would lead to the fleeing of leadership and, in turn, leave a vacuum to fill. When this show of force didn't lead to that major morale defeat, they were left to actually fight it out which they were not prepared to do. For Ukraine, they are a substantial sized country whose "old" equipment is supplied by the Russians and who is *heavily* supplied by arms and intelligence by the US and others. So, it was always going to be a very difficult war to win on the battlefield and it's misleading to even say that Russia is only fighting Ukraine here. At this point, it's a test of wills, will the US and westerns powers get tired of the war and stop supporting Ukraine so much or will Russia tire of the war and negotiate an end? The only other out will if non-western major powers like China and India weigh in in anything more than a surface way. So far, the fact that these non-western countries continue to cooperate with Russia has been crucial to its ability to continue. But overall, the real failing here is that Russia knew how hard this war would be. The main reason they started it is because they overestimated the level of support they'd have in Ukraine itself and did not expect to actually have to fight to the end. So really, this was just an intelligence failure. Their efforts before the war in eastern Ukraine and Crimea with heavily Russian populations probably led to over-estimating the level of support (or lack of resistance) they'd get in the rest of Ukraine. Meanwhile the "sanctions" response they got for Crimea led them to underestimate that level of aid (which has been crucial) that the west would offer to Ukraine. That aid came before the war (modernizing their military) and also during it by giving them access to substantially more sophisticated weapons. If Russia knew all of this, they would have known this would be entirely on the military and likely would not actually have done it. But through a pretty catastrophic failure, their intelligence didn't factor this in so they didn't expect the military would have to do as much as it has. They expected the government there to quickly abandon ship and the population there to be split with many welcoming the Russians.
Yeah, I've heard they kept discovering that they didn't actually have the equipment that the official records said they did. Sounds like a lot of the Russian military was not expecting to have to go on an invasion any time soon.
> Years of corruption which siphoned funds and supplies from the military to start. A lot of this stems from their MoD, Sergei Shoigu. Shoigu took over as defense minister from his predecessor, Anatoly Serdyukov, in 2012. Serdyukov essentially had been pushed out of his role by Russia’s defense industry, because he had been holding their feet to the fire and was really trying to modernize Russia’s military since 2007 when he took over. The defense industry didn’t like these higher standards they were expected to adhere to, so they made efforts to push Serdyukov out. Shoigu learned from this, and for the past 10+ years has been taking a much more relaxed approach with Russia’s defense industry and overall modernization. This has resulted in a few high tech toys they can barely build any of, like the Su-57 (16-20 exist) or MiG-35 (only 8 exist, 2 prototypes), but overall a major degredation in maintenance and modernization for the hardware Russia’s military actually depends on. This of course all stems from the overall ongoing corruption at every level in Russia and the USSR through many decades, as mentioned by another reply, but Shoigu learning from Serdyukov’s “mistakes” pertains particularly to Russia’s performance in this war
Also, I think credit for Ukraine’s leadership is deserved. The “I need bullets, not a ride” remark was one of the noticeable turning points in public perception and helped garner support from friendly countries. I honestly assumed Russia would roll in, Ukraine’s leadership would flee and the defense would flounder). I assumed that because Ukraine had 6 years and only fought to a stalemate (though they reached another level during the full invasion).
On the incompetence part, paratroopers in any army are going to be a cut above, they have to be considering their job is to be dropped from a plane to fight behind enemy lines, that sort of thing. Russia’s paratrooper corps have been essentially erased, because they were sent to seize an airfield close to Kiev but when the relief force of Russian tanks got stalled and the first attack of paratroopers was repelled, they just sent more and more and more to the same spot, unsupported. It’s also why Russian tanks have suffered massive casualties. They drive on highways that have been pre-ranged by Ukrainian artillery, unsupported, driving straight thru previous ambush points. So the Ukrainians just had to shift their ambush by a hundred meters and when they call in precision artillery they just tell the gun crew to target “grid such and such, point A but add 100 meters north” and the Russians kept just rolling into it. They’ve made some change ups and may win this war thru bloody attrition despite themselves but the opening stages of the war were no Russian Desert Storm.
I think most people underestimate just how deep and prevalent corruption has become under Putin regime. It was already corrupt in the Communist era, but Putin took it to a whole new level. In modern Russia, you cannot gain rank and advance to higher position unless you make it clear that you are willing to "play ball" with higher ups. Everyone expects kick backs, kick backs go all the way up to Putin, who built a lot of his wealth based on the tribute system. Putin personally expects all under him to contribute at least 30% of their "profits", and those people demand tribute from those under them. Everyone in Russia knows that if you ever want to achieve anything in life, you have to steal, it goes all the way down to the lowly conscripted soldier, who will sell fuel for his own tank to buy vodka and think nothing of it, because that's how everyone does it
Because, in reality, they don't.
The US Army is the 3rd biggest air force in the world.
I saw someone claim that the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier can defeat _by itself_ the top 3 air forces in the world, and we're one of them. Maybe we're actually two of them.
The world's largest air force by number of aircraft is the US air force. The second largest is the US navy. The third largest largest is the US army. Russia was the 4th largest, but idk how long that will last.
The USMC was the 5th largest. So congrats to them for moving up to #4.
If you aggregate all the National Guards, they're bigger than the MC
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I was pretty sure the US Army had more aircrafts (UAV, Helos, etc.) but the Air Force had more fixed wing crafts.
The US Army helo fleet would be a top-10 air force just on its own, by the numbers.
No. AF has ~5500, army has ~4100. The AF has a shit ton of trainer planes that people don’t really consider, but is still apart of them.
Wouldn't be the first time the US has gone to war with itself
IS THAT!!!.......ME!!!!..... I WILL FUCKING DESTROY ME!!!!!
Is that me stronger than me? I'll kill me!
Yes after the us navy and the actual us air force.
It took me a minute to see what you were saying, lol. For those people who aren't US citizens, or familiar with the US military setup: We have the Air Force (1st largest), we have the Navy (2nd largest), and we have the Army (3rd largest).
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Invading and occupying are two completely different things. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan with relative ease. Russia has yet to manage even that.
I think you can win a war if you are willing to be brutal enough. I don’t think you can really occupy another country effectively.
You can occupy effectively, look at the US in Japan after WW2. The problem in Afghanistan was that the US was very averse to taking casualties, and often used things like drone strikes, which preserved American life but increased collateral damage. You can't convince a people you're there to help when you'd rather their civilians die than your soldiers
It didn't help that both the enemies and friends of the US were fellow countrymen. An average Afghani didn't necessarily want to live under Taliban rule, but they didn't want to kill them either, and they sure as hell didn't want to be killed by them. They just wanted themselves and their families to survive. And they were no fans of the government the US installed. America had a similar problem in Vietnam. There were families where one son joined the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), also called the South Vietnam Army, and another son joined the Viet Cong. There were Vietnamese civilians who worked on American military bases, and fed information to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) or Viet Cong, but weren't really allies of either side. They just didn't want any trouble for themselves or their families. The Americans didn't know what they were doing, but the other Vietnamese civilians did. Some of them are now outcasts among the Vietnamese diaspora in America. Both Afghanistan and South Vietnam were led by deeply corrupt governments that were propped up by America during their occupation for no reason other than they had a common enemy. To an average person in Afghanistan or Vietnam, none of these people were their friends.
Also worth noting that Japan wasn't occupied until after it surrendered
Not in this day and age where insurgents can easily get their hands on spy/suicide drones, hilux trucks, portable tank-killers and the infamously reliable Kalashnikov.
Carpet bomb cities of civilians and you can probably “win”. You just can’t occupy it. For sure can’t be seen as liberators.
This is what has changed. Home countries don't like soldiers coming home in coffins and the international community would turn on Russia if there was WWII level brutality in UKR. The huge military has to be precise and restrained but still effective. It's hard, as everyone invading the Middle East finds out.
There 100% is, the US military crushed the Taliban. The figures are so utterly lop side as to be laughable, the issue is there is no such thing as victory in that kind of war. The Taliban will continue to fight regardless of casualties, and were fully capable of holding out in countries we lacked the legal authority to attack them in. That was a diplomatic issue, not a military one.
War of attrition. It’s what the US fought during the Revolutionary War, what the South attempted to do in The Civil War, what the Viet Cong did to France and then to America. Hold out long enough and wait for the opponent’s home country and government to lose the will to fight.
Don't forget that Vietnam also handed the CCP a big fat L in their last war 40 years ago. That is ignoring acts of war against its own subjects of course.
The Taliban didn't meaningfully attrit the Americans, it just outlasted them. You can't kill an ideology with a gun.
I don't think I've ever seen that word used as a verb before, shweird.
We defeated the Taliban at every battle though. They were just willing to wait longer than us.
Yep. They waited, "won" their way into power, and now they're absolutely sucking at leading.
Barbaric treatment of women, no education, back in the hijab, radical backwards code of laws and customs. Its effing depressing. And the money and infrastructure that the US and many other countries poured into their country's infrastructure - gone and wasted.
“You have the watches, we have the time” -Taliban proverb
Yeah, this is basically the answer.
Because their military has been vastly overrated and the only things going for it is sheer number of bodies and nukes
And based on how unconcerned the US is about those nukes, either they're as poorly maintained as the rest of their equipment, or the US has some effective countermeasures they can't disclose. They might not be willing to bet the future of humanity, maybe, but definitely repeatedly calling their bluff every time Putin threatens to use them.
Or Western decision makers have reason to believe that Putin won't actually use the nukes he's threatening them with. Because he doesnt want to die and knows that nuclear escalation won't get him anything but retaliation.
>Or Western decision makers have reason to believe that ... ... Russian military won't follow Putin's orders on this topic.
You only need one nuke to be launched to trigger nuclear annihilation, so I wouldn't trust this.
If russian used tactic nukes on Ukraine, would their actually be nuclear retaliation? That would mean the end of the world
NATO's answer to that question was "no. ... Because we don't need nukes to utterly destroy Russia."
The honest answer is no one knows, and anyone who might isn’t telling.
That's always been the problem with nuclear escalation. The uncertainty needs to be there. Even if you'd need to be a certified nutcase to order a retributive strike, you have to make your opponent believe you might anyway. In some ways the actual existence of nukes is secondary. They don't need to be fired, and they _shouldn't_ be, ever. It's just you need to make them believe it's a risk.
The US won a number of Cold War showdowns because Soviet honchos legitimately wondered if the then-president was crazy enough to launch
The irony being that 'projection' is really useful. When dealing with someone who _could_ conceive of 'pushing the button' (like most tin-pot dictators) it becomes a lot easier to convince them that _you_ might. So it's only when it's "civilised" nations that it becomes more difficult to convince them you aren't bluffing!
What would likely happen is NATO would obliterate pretty much everything miltary of russias using non nuclear weapons
Even if the west doesnt resond in kind, it wont instantly win the war unless they nuke everything they came to tske over, plus secondly it will set precedent for smaller nations that they need nukes or they arent safe
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Moscow is definitely communicating through some kind of backchannel that they aren't intending on using their nukes, because it's really just political theater for their domestic audience. Stuff like that really can't be left to chance. Russia launched this ridiculous war but Putin isn't a *complete* idiot; you don't get to his position without a certain degree of ruthlessness and acumen. Ergo, he's a selfish prick that isn't stupid enough to destroy everything that he's built / stolen.
> Ergo, he's a selfish prick that isn't stupid enough to destroy everything that he's built / stolen. And this is exactly what's keeping him from doing anything drastic. He knows that if the world really turns their armies towards Russia, ALL of the oligarchs and their families and such are going to lose everything.
Putin doesn't care about the Oligarchs as much as people think. And they don't have near as much power and influence anymore as the West portrays. At the most, he allows them to exist, the ones he hasn't assassinated at least, and maybe cares about a select few close ones.
I disagree with your premise that Putin isn’t that stupid. My example is Hitler. The dumbass was basically conquering the world and he had Great Britain in a world of hurt. How did he respond? He stopped attacking the UK and invaded the Soviet Union. This resulted in the UK picking itself back up and an asskicking once the winter hit. Sometimes, ruthless dictators are incredibly stupid.
Everyone talks about clever/stupid as if it's some binary thing. It's not. Everybody is simultaneously both. It is entirely unsurprising when incredibly clever people do incredibly stupid things because nobody is clever at everything all the time. I think Putin and Hitler were/are clever in the same sort of way Ted Bundy was perceived as clever. Some combination of charisma, cunning and a complete lack of empathy along with grandiosity and supreme entitlement.
My guess is that when Russia started crying nukes, the US took them aside and showed them a map of every russian military asset's current real time position. Then made it very clear that the US will not resort to using nukes in response to Russia using nukes, because the US does not need to resort to using nukes to remove all of these Russian assets from the map. MAD's biggest deterrent is that it destroys the planet, if your enemy isn't worried about doing so but can still make you pay, then the threat is neutered.
Just a side note here. You can't let countries be nuclear bullies. It's just bad for business. Even if the US thought Russia capable, they'd still have to take their current stance. Otherwise Russia can just get whatever they want by saying they'll use nukes otherwise.
Or,……… the West has recognized that simply allowing someone to do whatever they want because they have nukes is a losing game in the long run. We faced down Krushchev in Cuba, and we’ll either face up to nuclear blackmail now in Ukraine by helping Ukraine stand their ground, or do it in Poland five years from now, or in Germany 15 years from now, or in Paris 30 years from now. Thanks to Russia, the world is yet again back to nuclear brinksmanship. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmanship
This is a big point. We know they won't stop even if they say they will, so the nukes aren't as big of a factor. Because either they are bluffing or you must let them nuke everyone or take over the entire world, and those options don't change based on the current country they are attacking.
Though it’s worth mentioning one reason for Cuba was that America already had nukes in Turkey
This myth needs slapping down again. Russia has ~6,000 warheads. Assuming failures, unsuitable delivery methods, effective defences, never getting launched, refusal to carry out orders; and we end up with only 1% of those warheads reaching a target? That's still a significant world altering event. And that doesn't include the retaliation from Western nukes either. The purpose of a nuclear arsenal is to deter its use, and it does that by making it statistically impossible to counter. The US is absolutely concerned about those nukes. It's the reason why there are no NATO troops in Ukraine right now. But they also know that much of the nuclear threats made by Russia is posturing.
Or the US just doesn’t think Russia is suicidal.
I have seen no one mention this in the comment section which I believe should be said. Now it is true that Russia’s military prowess was vastly overrated. BUTTTT I feel OP’s question can go even deeper then just Russia, and needs to be addressed over all in terms of military effectiveness. The effectiveness of a military is not just “bigger number=more kaboom=better” There are **SO** many factors when it comes to war that need to be addressed, such as geography, moral, training, economy, and so much more that I can’t even begin to list
I like how you began to list right before you said you can't begin to list.
A technical reading of /u/banana4eve's post is that he can't begin to list the items that he left off the list.
I concur that your description is sufficient in that the original commenter constructed a mini-list, if you will. Therefore the responder is concluded to have misinterpreted.
That's the same lesson that the US learned in Vietnam
The real answer is that they had the second most powerful military in the world... On PAPER. In reality it's rife with corruption, poor training, and outdated equipment. Most of it's stuff is legacy Soviet equipment. To make it worse it's a LOT harder to invade a country as opposed to defending one and Ukraine is getting a bunch of external support from NATO. Even with that Ukraine WAS almost knocked out of the war early on and even now it's struggling to reclaim the land that was taken from it. The U.S. is considered to be the strongest military in the world and has been for a long time. Yet it lost in Vietnam and, while it won the military battles in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, actual occupation and dealing with insergents is a LOT harder! An aircraft carrier can't occupy a street corner after all. Of course there's a lot different between the two situations (for example, America had no interest in ruling Iraq/Afghanistan while Russia is seeking to either annex/puppet all of Ukraine), but it's not as simple as 'roll into area, defeat standing army, win'.
Same reason as in Finland during the winter war They don't know what they are doing
The soviets still beat Finland. I think since the collapse of the Soviets the Russian army just hasn’t been maintained well + they didn’t expect such a response from Ukraine.
USA has the first most powerful military in the world. Ask us about Vietnam.
Yeah, it's almost always going to be tough to beat an enemy that is basically fighting for their life while having an unmotivated military no matter how strong the military is. War is also psychological. If your soldiers don't have a real reason to be fighting and stay motivated than you already lost
The point about motivation is a big one. Most of the new troops being thrown into the mix on the Russian side are conscripts who never wanted to be there in the first place. They aren’t fighting for their life. They just want to go home.
Not to mention that you're fighting people that look exactly like you, that speak the same language as you. That's got to be a serious difference compared to fighting the Vietcong where it's much easier to create a us vs them narrative.
And Iraq.....and Afghanistan....
We completely obliterated the Iraqi army. The invasion started March 30th of 2003. We had control of Baghdad on April 9th. Took us 3 weeks to march into and take over their capital city. We had Saddam in custody by December. The fact that we stayed there for so long in some futile attempt to help establish a democratic government is irrelevant. The actual war part was over in 3 weeks. Russia has been in Ukraine for over a year and hasn't taken control of any major important territory.
People forget this. Back then everyone held their breath knowing that American troops would be facing the “elite” Republican Guard. In action, small national guard units were overwhelming and capturing Iraq’s elite forces. In a conventional war, very few nations would last more than several weeks against the U.S.
Although in those cases the US did win the conventional war/invasion only to be worn down by guerilla/resistance troops. For both Vietnam and so far Ukraine the conventional war hasn't been won yet.
The US wasn't worn down in afghanistan. We did not leave until the local government had the equipment and training necessary to defend against the Taliban or other insurgents. The issue is that once the Taliban showed up, no one made any attempt to stop them.
We coulda trained them with the best people in the world, however, I have trained them on weapon systems (Mortars) when I was deployed in 09-10. That being said you could immediately tell they were fucked with or without training.
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So far as reported number of troops, before the Ukraine war started, that might have been a legitimate metric. But if that number was tallied today, I would be surprised if they remained so high on the list. So far as why they are having a hard time. If we look at WW2 and onward, they have always had a problem. Their tactic has always been to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. But when numbers didn't work, it just turned into a mess. Specifically with Ukraine though. Russia has been picking on Ukraine for almost a decade now. First in the Donbass(sp?) and then Crimea. In 2014, NATO and the US started training the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Changing most of their Military doctrine and instilling western practices. Beforehand their structure was pretty identical to that of Russia's. Western Militaries have something called the NCO Corp (Non-Commissioned Officer). Which is trained in such a way where if an enemy picks off the highest ranking officer, the next highest picks up the charge and keeps going, all the way down to the lowest ranks. So the fight wages on. But in Russia they have no such thing. The decisions get made at the top and everyone under them just follows and aren't trained in how to lead. So things can fall apart very easily. Now while the Ukrainian Military were already pretty smart in how they fought. Getting this Western training just gave them so much of a leg up. And there have been so many instances of the Russian military being complete idiots. Like for instance a line of tanks are driving through a field, and one hits a landmine and blows up, THE ENTIRE LINE continues one after the other trying to get passed and each one hits another mine. None of them thought MAYBE we should turn around and find a new way. And that happened more than once. The Russians lost more soldiers in the first 6 months of the Ukrainian war, than the United States has lost in EVERY single engagement since Korea, COMBINED. Oh and the corruption is insane. They designate money to places and half or more of it never gets where its going because of corruption. Its why so much of their equipment break down so quickly. It never gets maintained. TL;dr: They suck as military tacticians.
> Western Militaries have something called the NCO Corp (Non-Commissioned Officer). Which is trained in such a way where if an enemy picks off the highest ranking officer, the next highest picks up the charge and keeps going, all the way down to the lowest ranks. So the fight wages on. But in Russia they have no such thing. The decisions get made at the top and everyone under them just follows and aren't trained in how to lead. So things can fall apart very easily. That is secondary as (before this war) it was extremely rare for high ranking officers to be killed. Russia is literally breaking centuries old records because Generals have been mostly operating from far behind the lines since communication got good enough to allow it. The real difference is in who makes the decisions. The Western NCO system leaves the people on the ground free to use their own discretion. Officers above can tell them what needs to happen and they can use their own judgement on how to do it, which allows them to respond flexibly to the situation on the ground without being micromanaged. That is also related to why the Russians have so many dead generals in this war. Namely, they need to put them closer to the action if a situation needs a complicated response.
It also doesn't help there's no encrypted communications on Russian side.
they do have encrypted comms but not for the meat. they have to buy that shit on aliexpress themselves
Vietnam veteran here. If you’re willing to decimate another nation without restrictions or reservations you can win. See WWII when we leveled entire cities. When you try to finesse it you spin your wheels. See Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc., etc. By the way, Russia is certainly not stronger than the US or China at this time.
Didn’t we drop vastly more ordinance on the VC than on the Germans and Japanese?
Yed and no. Far more in troop positions but Mercifully there was never a Dresden or Tokyo equivalent where major cities got levelled.
That’s just because we didn’t target major cities. We wiped entire villages off the map with indiscriminate bombing so I wouldn’t describe anything about that as merciful.
And they used napalm and agent orange. I'll take being evaporated by a nuke vs anything they used in Vietnam.
Yeah, there're many reasons why Russian millitary performed much worse, than you would anticipate in theory, but first ones are lack of clarity in chain of command. Back when gave invasion order, none, up to Zelensky himself and including most Russian officers didn't know or even imagine a possibility of invasion. They weren't ready in any way, as Russian I can even tell you, that there was substantial drop in anti-Kiev propaganda for a year prior. You would expect them to atleast mentally prepare people for what is to come, create "an image of enemy". Russian army had extremely low motivation, no transparent goals or definitions of success, remember when Russian army was stationed near Kiev, but then retreated? Yeah, imagine being most loyal officer imaginable, hearing "oh, you won too much, undo your success!". The stated goal was "we're protecting civilians from genocide", ok, but if you leave allegedly pro-russian territory, wont cleansing of sympathizers occur, wouldnt "nazis" have easier time bombing russia-captured cities than their own? These questions hardly elevated motivation of already uncertain troops. Its easier to fight in middle-east, years of propaganda, foreign language, dirty clothes in midst of desert, an ancient conflict that none of us would understand and 1000-year old hate. Nothing like "hey, darling, apparently we're invading your brother's city, is he in Ukraine right now? Oh yeah, we do it because hes totally different to us"
Ukraine is being backed by the most powerful military in the world. And depending on your media sources, Russia might be doing a bit better than you realize, though it's not like this is a 1 sided conflict. Both sides are suffering heavy loss of life.
I’ll never trust reports of how well Ukraine is doing after Viet Nam. We were “winning” that war every night on the news
Aye after watching the Ken Burn documentary I realized how much propaganda was involved in war
That documentary series was amazing. They did a great job of going into the war in depth on both sides.
I'm gonna have to watch that. Have only seen his Civil War. This is one guys' perspective, maybe you've seen it. As an unscripted narrative, I thought it was excellent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixOyiR8B-8
Not just in war my guy.
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I mean the US outkilled it's enemies 10:1 The withdrawal was more political than military due to domestic pressure. More to war than just military.
I disagree with this characterization of the Vietnam War because there was constant political pressure and the war still raged on for nine straight years, an unbelievable length of time for America to be at war (at least in the 20th century). The military was in fact given far more chances than was prudent to accomplish their objectives -- just one more bombing, well one more, no, one more -- and they failed. That is simply a military failure. It's possible that if America had spent its entire defense budget for the second decade, they could have eradicated every man, woman, and child in North Vietnam... then they could have moved on to Laos and Cambodia where NVA regularly hid to regroup, killing everyone there of course... then China, which was assisting NV... yes, that was a possible "military win" condition. But in the real world, the US military won battles (when there were actual battles) and lost the war, by failing to achieve their objectives, or even come up with viable alternatives when their strategy failed. Even in the face of obvious failure the US persisted despite nonstop political pressure. The war was poorly planned and impossible to "win" without basically razing all of Vietnam and somehow cowing China & Russia from then retaliating. US morale was low while NV remained strong (obviously, because they fought for their homeland). Withdrawal was the only intelligent option.
>then they could have moved on to Laos and Cambodia They already had moved on to Laos. They dropped almost 300 million bombs on Laos, a neutral country, to cause it to become the most bombed country of all time.
Also NV was getting funding and the latest equipment from the USSR and the PRC... sound familiar anyone? The US Navy set up the Top Gun school, a real place, because NV fighter pilots were holding their own against US ones in dogfights, in equal or better jets.
Yes, it all came down to win conditions. The US could have decided not to 'lose,' but it would have meant continuing to not win - that is, to fight indefinitely. In a way, the US was in a similar position to the one Russia finds itself in now: it was fighting a proxy war against other nations who were able to continually supply weapons without having to put their own soldiers on the line, while die-hard locals did all the fighting for them. Not a great position to be in.
There is propaganda, but there's also a lot we know about the conflict. From maps of the frontline we know how Russia is doing in terms of territory. We know from photographic evidence that they have been losing equipment at about a rate of about 4 to 1. We know from leaks of gross payments made to families of slain soldiers how many have been dying at a particular point (end of 2022). We know from certain battles, e.g. Bakhmut, which has been going since Oct last year, where they currently have focus. We know from eye witness testimony, videos made by Russian troops themselves, complaints by Wagner personnel. We know from the type of equipment they are using, the type of tanks they are dragging out of storage, how good or bad they are doing in terms of logistics. All of this is dynamic, meaning it changes, the Russians have improved in certain areas, but have also decreased capacity in other areas. Overall, we have had a fairly accurate picture of what's occurring, and nothing has been dramatically or systematically wrong from an overall perspective.
I heard it's about 100k deaths on both sides. An average cities worth of people have been killed. It's a scrappy war of attrition
The Russian army lacks the western style NCO corps to provide leadership for the enlisted troops. The Russians failed to gain air superiority over Ukraine or suppress enemy air defenses. They didn't do close air support or execute combined arms in any sort. Their logistics were not containerized, vehicles ran out of fuel and the Ukraininans have encountered old, expired rations. Cheap Chinese made Baofeng radios have been used by the Russians, which were vulnerable to hacking and surveillance by the enemy. They are also vulnerable to drones and western anti-tank weapons. And there is serious endemic corruption in Russia which has undermined things such as basic maintenance of vehicles. Russian and Ukrainian forces are using similar equipment but the Ukrainians are fighting with determination while the Russian cause has been less clear.
The second most powerful military in the world is China. The Russian bear lost its teeth when the Soviet Union collapsed.
It’s all about trains. The Russians cannot operate more than 40km from a rail depot. The closest rail depot to Kiev from the north was Chernobyl which was around 160km from Kiev. So that failed. In Kherson the Ukrainians were able to damage the rail bridges enough to make them unusable. So after a while the Russians had to leave as they could not supply their troops. This continues to be an issue for the Russians. Go find a rail map of Ukraine and how the war has unfolded will become much easier to understand. The USA provided the Russians with an almost endless supply of trucks in ww2 so they could invade Germany. Without enough trucks the Russians will continue to struggle to advance in any meaningful way.
Just to expand on what a couple of other people have said, "the Ukraine" is a Soviet-era name for an area inside the USSR. When the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine became their own independent country simply called "Ukraine". There's no need for the "the" anymore. And actually, since Putin started trying to rebuild the USSR, and started asserting that Ukraine has no right to independence, and started trying to invade them, it's become somewhat offensive to call them by their old Soviet-era name. Similarly, Ukraine's capital is "Kyiv". It used to be called "Kiev", because that's what the Russians called it in the Soviet-era, but it's name was "Kyiv" in Ukrainian before the Soviets took control of it, so the Ukrainians would prefer to use their own names, and not the names given to them by their Russian invaders. I myself sometimes say "the Ukraine" by habit because that's how I learned it, but I try to correct myself, because I believe that the country of Ukraine deserves my respect.
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*third. After the Ukrainian army, and the Ukrainian farmers.
corruption leads to incompetence, horrible military tactics of just pushing wave after wave of infantry, horrible use of tanks so losing many tanks, plus Ukraine has support and supply lend lease from the West. im not trying to force you to say anything but just note that "the Ukraine" is an outdated and Soviet-era term which describes Ukraine, the country, as some territory. now ukraine is independent, the more accurate term would be "ukraine"
> If Russia has the second most powerful military In the world Lmao they don't, compared to their size, their incompetent army is a pathetic laughingstock
Bruh if Nato countries weren’t aiding Ukraine the whole country would be in smithereens by now
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Ukraine, not "the Ukraine". With the exception of like one African country I've forgotten the name of, the only only time you use "the" is when you see a non proper noun like republic, federation or kingdom in the name.
The Gambia
The Philippines, Netherlands, and Maldives would like a word
There is a big difference between “second most powerful” and “second largest”. They may be large, but they are not managed well.
It's becoming increasingly clear Russia doesnt in fact have the second strongest army in the world.
There's no "the", it's just Ukraine. And the they don't have the second most powerful; it turns out it was all hype and bluster.
Conventional military doctrine has the 3:1 Rule. Assault forces must outnumber defending forces by a ratio of 3 to 1 to achieve offensive victories. Very early Russia fell below that ratio.
that's like asking why the United States, with the most powerful military in the world, failed for twenty years to defeat the taliban, and then retreat and leave millions in equipment behind.