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I've heard the general-in-the-front thing is just Russian military culture. They lead from the front. That has advantages and disadvantages: one of the disadvan
by pasabagi 4y ago
I've heard the general-in-the-front thing is just Russian military culture. They lead from the front. That has advantages and disadvantages: one of the disadvantages is that generals get killed. For instance, they lost a fair few high-ranked officers in Syria.
A lot of the stuff you've mentioned is a combination of ordinary military incompetence (do you remember that US destroyer crashing a few years back? That's happening in the most well-funded, capable navy in the world. Other militaries are worse), Russian doctrine (scared to fly planes = no tradition of SEAD/DEAD, no doctrinal requirement, etc), and the fact that this war is not really the kind of war the Russian military is designed for.
That's part of why it's all so surprising. People didn't think the invasion would take place because it's a bad idea for the Russians.
If you consider that a military is like a very big, too-big-to-fail company, with marginally worse-than-average pathologies for that kind of organization, except when disasters happen, people die and it's plastered all over the news by a very unsympathetic media, you can probably imagine why the Russian military is looking the way it does. My takeaway is essentially that the Russian military performance is exactly what you would expect for an organization that size, in a country like Russia, doing something very difficult against determined opposition.
- wrp 4y ago> People didn't think the invasion would take place because it's a bad idea for the Russians. Just before the invasion, French military intelligence told Macron that Russia wouldn't invade, because Russian military capabilities were not sufficient.
- arkitaip 4y agoIt's hilarious and terrifying that Putin had a less accurate understanding of the capabilities of the Russian military than most world leaders due to the insanely corrupt and fear-based society he has created.
- RobertoG 4y agoPutin mistake was not in his understanding of the capabilities of the Russian military, but in the reaction to expect to the invasion from the Ukraine and NATO leaders.
- tomohawk 4y agoTypical military intelligence incompetence.
- wrp 4y agoCurrent accepted wisdom is that Putin decided to invade because the FSB told him it would be a cakewalk. I'm really surprised that no one in the media has drawn a parallel to the intelligence failure leading to the US invasion of Iraq, when the CIA told Bush it would be a "slam dunk" to find WMDs there. It seems the CIA and FSB have a similar problem with groupthink.
- RobertoG 4y agoNot a fan of the CIA, but, in the Iraq case, the push for the invasion came from some elements in the White House (you know who), they have already decided that Iraq would be invaded and were searching for a reason. In fact, the CIA didn't lie to the White House. "The report is rife with what now are obvious red flags that the Bush White House oversold the case for war. It asserts that Iraq had an active chemical weapons program at one point, though it admits that the CIA had found no evidence of the program’s continuation." From: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/cia-iraq-bush-wmd-report/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/cia-iraq-bush-w...
- netsharc 4y agoThere's a rumour going around in March that the FSB had an assignment (for years now) to bribe the Ukranian military , which of course the FSB officers reported they did while pocketing the money ("they're giving me cash in preparation a war that'll never happen, and they don't expect a receipt? Don't mind if I do!"). So it's possible Putin/other departments thought the Ukranian military had been pacified. The second part of the rumour is that the FSB officers panicked when they realized war was really going to happen, so they leaked the plans to the CIA in hopes of getting Putin to back down.
- wrp 4y agoDiscussion at the time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30796339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30796339). The article posted may have been a hoax.