For decades, Russia has been the world's second most powerful military. Today,
it is the second most powerful military inside Ukraine.
How in the world did a nation with such a significant military overmatch
get into a quagmire against a much weaker power? Just what is wrong with the Russian military?
The numbers speak for themselves. As of 30 days since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
the Russian military has lost a staggering 1,794 vehicles. Of these, 877 have been completely
destroyed, 34 seriously damaged, 228 abandoned, and 655 captured by the Ukrainians. Compare that
with 536 vehicles that Ukraine has lost, of which 205 were destroyed, 16 severely damaged,
37 abandoned, and 278 captured. And these are just figures confirmed via international intelligence
agencies and amateur sleuths using social media and satellite photographs- the real casualties
are bound to be much higher. When it comes to personnel, the only official figure given by
Russia's ministry of Defense is a few hundred KIA, however the real figure is estimated at
between ten to fifteen thousand dead with that many- or more- wounded, missing in action,
or deserting. US intelligence estimates that Russia is suffering an incomprehensible
1,000 casualties a day. Simply put, this makes victory in Ukraine impossible for Russia.
So what in the world is going on with an army every western analyst had touted
as the second best in the world, and a 'near-peer' competitor to the United States?
The problems are numerous, but like all great tragedies, start out with the smallest things.
Maintenance is something nobody likes doing, it's a downright pain for all
involved. But preventative maintenance is vital for keeping the complex machinery of war working,
and the United States military places a premium on it. There are rules, regulations, and all
sorts of detailed checklists for everything from maintaining proper tire pressure in a vehicle
to oil changes and probably even how to adjust your seat properly- but in Ukraine, Russia has
shown with startling clarity what happens when you ignore even the most basic of maintenance.
One of the most common images of this war is abandoned Russian vehicles littering the
Ukrainian countryside by the hundreds. And while there's numerous reasons for this that
we'll get into shortly, by far the dumbest is a simple failure by the Russians to simply turn
their vehicles around once a month while in storage. Logistics and maintenance experts
from western armies were quick to spot the telltale signs of sun damage on many tires
found flat on abandoned Russian vehicles, which let them know exactly how those tires
got flat. As the sun beats down on a vehicle kept parked in storage, it weakens the rubber- which
is why it's important to routinely rotate a parked vehicle so that the sun doesn't
have a chance to break down the rubber on the sun-facing tires. The Russians didn't do this,
and inevitably, their multi-million dollar vehicles ended up as scrap for Ukrainian
farmers when they were forced to run them at low pressure through mud and their tires popped.
There is ample evidence of a failure to conduct even basic maintenance across hundreds of captured
Russian vehicles, but tires once more are betraying the Russian military for one reason:
they're cheap. Russian vehicles appear to be equipped with Chinese military tires-
specifically Yellow Sea YS20 tires which according to former quality auditor of US
Army tactical vehicles Trent Telenko, is a bad copy of the Michelin XZL military tire.
The Chinese tires aren't rated to carry as heavy loads as the vehicles they have been placed on,
and are riddled with construction defects. While western military tires are more expensive, they
are also of much higher quality and even undergo x-ray testing to ensure integrity. Chinese tires
are not held to the same standards, and Russia has bought them by the thousands, ironically making
things like 40 million dollar air defense systems completely useless thanks to a few cheap tires.
That's far from the only cheap equipment being fielded by the Russian military though,
as it has become abundantly clear that the world's second most powerful army
is a paper tiger. Sometimes so literally it's frightening.
Recently, Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention sent a thank you letter to the Russian
Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, praising his efforts in ensuring high levels of corruption in
the Russian military. Ukraine's discoveries have been nothing short of shocking. Tank
explosive reactive armor is supposed to defend the vulnerable vehicles from anti-tank weapons fire,
something which has been absolutely mauling Russia's armored forces.
Yet upon capturing several Russian tanks, the Ukrainians cut open the armor panels and
discovered that instead of an armor package, the tanks were protected by... egg cartons.
But Russian soldiers haven’t fared much better. In February 2nd, Russia unveiled its futuristic
new Sotnik full-body armor, allegedly capable of stopping a .50 caliber round. That's impressive,
but in the real world Russia's actual soldiers are protected once more by...
cardboard. Ukrainian forces have found time and again that
the plates inside of Russian body armor are nothing more than stiff cardboard.
The Ukrainian NACP thanked the Russian defense minister for
ensuring that Russian troops would be so easy to defeat, and advised that they
include training for their soldiers on how to properly surrender to Ukrainian forces.
So why are Russian soldiers going to war
wearing cardboard body armor and in tanks protected by egg crates?
When Vladimir Putin inherited the Russian military it could barely keep its own ships
afloat and soldiers were wrapping their feet in cloth instead of wearing socks. For two
decades though Putin has channeled hundreds of billions into modernizing the Russian military,
prompting the New York Times in January 27th, 2022 to write the following headline: Russia's
Military, Once Creaky, Is Modern and Lethal. But they weren't the only ones to seriously misjudge
the state of Russia's armed forces. In 2020 The Economist ran the headline: Russian military
forces dazzle after a decade of reform, followed by the sub headline: NATO will need to step up.
Over and over again western media and defense publications have been awash
with tales of a resurgent Russia investing hundreds of billions into creating a modern,
lethal force. But the truth has been laid bare- much of that money has obviously been siphoned
off by individuals across the length and breadth of Russian leadership and acquisition chains.
Corruption is nothing new in Russia- Putin himself is likely the world's richest man
thanks to all the wealth he's stolen from national industries and oligarchs he disliked.
What is new is just how jaw-droppingly pervasive Russian corruption has been,
stretching so far and gobbling up so much funding that Russian soldiers are using egg crate
tank armor and cardboard armor inserts. Cheap Chinese tires show a further siphoning of funds,
with untold millions pocketed by spending well under allotted procurement budgets.
It's all but a certainty then that Russia's infamous maintenance problems aren't just a
sign of bad leadership and poor standards, but also a result of the corruption that has eaten
up funds meant for maintenance of equipment and procurement of quality replacement parts.
We have evidence of this from the many reports of Russian armored vehicle crews
scrounging through Ukrainian junkyards for replacement parts- which in at least one
verified instance led to Ukrainians stealing other parts from a broken down vehicle while
its operators were themselves trying to steal parts from the Ukrainians. When they returned,
they installed the stolen part and realized they were now missing other parts,
and thus set off once more to raid the junkyard. Ukrainian citizens took the opportunity to steal
back the original part in question and disappear with it. The vehicle was eventually abandoned,
and Ukraine may have officially caused the first combat casualty of warfare through trolling.
Ineptitude is yet another of the staggering number of problems affecting the Russian military. We
have seen this at the highest levels, with the Russian intelligence services completely failing
to properly assess how Ukrainians would respond to an invasion, or how well prepared its military was
to defend its homeland. Russia expected an easy victory- so easy in fact that on day one Russia
launched multiple air assaults just outside of Kyiv, expecting that it could simply create an air
bridge by seizing runways and fly reinforcements in, with the capital falling within three days.
Instead the air assaults were almost all destroyed, inflicting horrible casualties
on Russia's much vaunted Airborne forces. In Russia, its airborne forces are legendary and
even enjoy an entire day dedicated to them called Paratroopers' Day. However, when put to the test,
Russia's paratroopers failed to achieve even a one of their objectives in the
opening days of the war, being thoroughly defeated by Ukraine's rapid response forces.
It would be unfair to place all the blame on Russia's paratroopers though. Truthfully,
they were let down by the massive incompetence of Russian leadership,
who believed lightly armed paratroopers could hold airports long enough for heavy vehicles
to simply be flown in. This underestimated not just Ukrainian capabilities to respond
to deep penetration air assaults, but also Ukrainian air defenses, which were still
mostly active even weeks into the war and made reinforcing via air bridge impossible.
The failure to shut down Ukraine's air defenses is another casualty of Russian incompetence,
though this time it stretches all the way to the top. When the United States led a coalition in
1991 to end Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, it shut down Iraq's air defenses within 48 hours through
surgical and overwhelming strikes, while fighter aircraft swept from the skies any Iraqi fighters
foolish enough to resist. By comparison, Putin dedicated only a small portion of the vastly
superior-in-number Russian air force to try to shut down Ukraine's air defenses. What should
have taken Russia a few days to accomplish has yet to materialize, and incredibly a month
into fighting the Ukrainian air force is still largely intact and flying up to 5 sorties a day.
It's believed that Putin did not want to dedicate the number of aircraft necessary to the task as
it would signal that his 'special military operation' was in fact what it really is:
a full-scale war. To maintain domestic support, Putin must keep up the facade
that Russian forces are still engaged in only light fighting, and thanks to
his massive control over Russian media he's still somewhat succeeding at maintaining this narative.
But this has allowed Ukraine's air defenses to continue to take a heavy toll on Russian aircraft,
with 39 planes and 40 helicopters lost in just the first two weeks alone. The total
number today after a month of fighting is unknown, but believed to be well over 100.
Incompetence in the Russian military however extends all the way down the chain of command.
Russian forces have to date shown little competency in everything from convoy security to
responding to ambushes. In this video we can see Russian armor bunched up inside of a neighborhood,
and subsequently they fall prey to a well-coordinated ambush.
Not only do the bunched up vehicles make easy targets, but the destruction or damaging of
one vehicle can cause traffic jams as the panicked drivers try to get away.
This is a failure of the proper way to use armor in combination with infantry. In the West,
armor is always closely supported by infantry who's job it is to protect the tanks from
enemy anti-tank teams. Not only should these vehicles not have been bunched up so closely
together- they're lucky they weren't also under air or artillery attack- but if the
convoy had to stop for some reason, they should have been deploying infantry to
screen the flanks against exactly this type of ambush. Yet time and again we see Russian
troops failing to grasp even this most basic of combined arms concepts, and Russian armored
vehicles are paying a staggering price for it with nearly 2,000 combat losses.
In yet another video we see how Russian troops have been reacting to ambushes.
In this video we see a column of Russian vehicles wander into a Ukrainian ambush,
with a vehicle taken out by an anti-tank team. The US military teaches that the best way to survive
an ambush is to assault it by turning armored vehicles into the ambush so their thicker,
frontal plates are presented to the enemy, and deploying infantry to fire on and suppress the
enemy. Forces outside of the kill zone can then launch an assault against the ambush's flanks.
Instead, the Russian forces scatter in panic, with only two of the tanks turning to the
ambush and returning fire. Forces outside of the ambush simply come to a dead stop,
and no Russian infantry dismounts to assault the ambush and relieve
pressure on their buddies in the kill zone.
Tactical incompetence extends to pretty much every aspect of Russian convoy security though,
as their convoys have been observed coming to full-stops at intersections- an absolute
no-no for any convoy. Then, when they eventually begin moving again, instead of deploying screening
elements on either side of the intersection, the convoy simply pulls ahead in single file, leaving
themselves wide open to enemy attack. Perhaps most baffling of all though is the destruction of air
defense equipment via air strike within parked convoys, with the operators not bothering to
turn on their air defense radars for hours while the convoy sat at a dead standstill.
Russian troops are proving themselves to be poorly trained to the point of gross incompetence,
but we couldn't mention convoys without explaining one of Russia's greatest failures to date.
By now everyone has seen images of an incredible forty kilometer convoy of armored vehicles,
fuel trucks, and artillery all stuck on its way to Kyiv, with similar scenes repeating themselves
at a smaller scale throughout Ukraine. Just what in the world is going on with Russia's convoys?
Incredibly, the answer is simple: they're out of gas. Even more incredibly,
they still haven't solved the problem even after three weeks.
Initially Russia's forces went into Ukraine with approximately 3-5 days of supplies,
and relied on their logistics fleets to keep them resupplied past that. The only problem
is that Russia doesn't have enough trucks or logistics personnel to properly resupply its
armed forces. Instead the troops rely on railroads to haul supplies to the front,
a task helped by Russia’s very impressive rail logistics corps capable of building new rails,
maintaining rails, and repairing them. The problem is Ukraine keeps blowing up the railways,
and Russian troops can't seem to stop them. At this point, any hope of supplying forces
inside Ukraine via the shared railways between the two nations are a pipe dream.
But you still need to be able to get supplies from a railhead to where combat is actually
taking place, and Russia's lack of supply trucks makes this impossible in a meaningful way once
an offensive has moved a few dozen miles out of friendly territory. Each Russian combined army
is assigned a material-technical support brigade consisting of two truck battalions with a total of
150 general cargo trucks with 50 trailers and 260 specialized trucks per brigade. This gives Russia
enough logistical capacity to resupply forces no further than 90 miles from a supply dump,
as increasing distance lowers the number of trips each truck can make and adds further delay to full
resupply. With forces now inside Ukraine's borders and far outside the range of supply depots safe
behind enemy lines, resupply has become slow- but adding to Russia's problems is the fact
that Ukrainian forces are very good at finding Russian trucks and destroying them. In fact,
Ukrainians have shown a preference for destroying trucks over armored vehicles,
and have a saying- “tanks can't fight without resupply”.
With each lost truck, resupply takes even longer,
leading to stalled out offensives and an incredible 40 kilometer long train of parked
vehicles. But the general ineptitude of Russian leadership makes orderly resupply difficult,
causing massive traffic snarls of their own creation and further miring Russian troops down.
This lack of leadership highlights yet another of Russia's massive deficiencies- the complete
lack of a trained and disciplined non-commissioned officer corps.
In the US military, non-commissioned officers, or NCOs, make up the backbone of its armed forces.
These are the men and women responsible for the everyday running and maintenance of the
American military- and Russia lacks any similar capability. Thanks to its hierarchical nature,
the Russian military has placed little emphasis on properly training a professional NCO corps and
now that it is facing its first modern foe, its military is suffering for it.
While America places an emphasis on empowering its NCOs to make on-the-fly decisions and seize
the initiative, the Russian military has no such leadership cadre, which inevitably leads
to a need for senior officers to 'lead from the front'. But senior officers are few in number,
and simply can't be as omnipresent as a wide cadre of NCOs can be- and even more importantly, are
far too valuable to risk dying on the front lines, which is exactly what's been happening to Russia's
Majors, Colonels, and even Generals. As of this writing, 7 senior Russian generals are believed to
have been killed in one month. By comparison, the United States lost 2 generals in twenty years of
fighting the global war on terror- one was killed in the September 11th attack at the Pentagon,
and the other was killed on August 5th, 2014 during an insider attack in Afghanistan.
Zero of America's general officers have been killed on the front lines.
Russian generals claim to simply 'lead from the front', and take inspiration from Prince Pyotr
Ivanovich Bagration who was fatally wounded at the battle of Borodino in 1812, or Generalissimo
Alexander Suyorov who always fought on the most exposed part of the front. However, the truth is
that Russian generals are having to fight at the front because they don't trust their subordinates
to follow orders, and because of the complete breakdown of their communications abilities.
Communications though is yet another of Russia's mind-boggling failures in its
execution of this invasion. Once more, likely due to corruption, the world has learned that
a significant amount of Russia's armed forces are operating on civilian-quality
unsecured radios. Radio broadcasts between Russian units have been recorded by civilian
observers using basic equipment, with some civilians taking the opportunity to jam
Russian frequencies or simply troll them with the Ukrainian national anthem,
the popular American 'yankee doodle' song, or other random audio. Incredibly,
even Russia's strategic bombers have been recorded operating on completely open and un-secure radios.
Not only has Ukrainian interruption of these unsecured communications caused
massive problems for Russia's military, but it's even led to strategic defeats of its forces.
At least one Russian general has been killed after his position was pinpointed
by listening in to these un-secured broadcasts. Ukrainian artillery has also been very successful
in using these broadcasts to pinpoint Russian units and saturate them with fire.
Perhaps most baffling of all though is the failure of Russia's highly secure cryptophone system.
Introduced in 2021, ERA was touted as the most secure communications system in the world,
capable of secure conversations from almost anywhere on the face of the planet. However,
Russian generals and intelligence agents have been unable to use it inside of Ukraine. The
reason? It relies on cell towers and uses 3G and 4G to communicate,
and the Russians have destroyed most of the cell towers in the areas they've occupied.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in research, development, and procurement costs all wasted
on a system that can't work when the Russians need it the most simply because somebody didn't
tell the troops not to destroy cell towers. Now, Russians are forced to use unencrypted
landlines for highly sensitive conversations, which inevitably have been intercepted
by Ukraine and western intelligence agencies to great strategic effect.
By now, you're no doubt fully aware of the extent of Russia's war crimes
against Ukraine's civilians, and this is yet because of another failure of
the Russian military. Russia has a very low supply of smart weapons,
both because it simply can't afford them due to 2014's sanctions, and because Russia has always
placed a low priority on precision weapons. Most of its aircraft also lack targeting pods.
Inevitably it was feared that as Russia's stockpile of smart munitions dried up,
it would resort to much more indiscriminate 'dumb bombs', resulting in high amounts
of collateral damage and very little actual destruction of intended targets:
ukrainian military positions. This turned out to be the case within a week of the invasion,
but the scale of assault on civilians has only increased exponentially since then. Why?
Simply put, because the Russian military is really bad at war. They're so bad that they rely on the
mass slaughter of civilians to force a peace on their terms. They did this in Georgia, they did
it in Chechnya, and they did it in Aleppo, killing thousands of civilians with indiscriminate bombing
and artillery fire. Now they're doing it in Ukraine as their offensive bogs
down due to stiff Ukrainian resistance. Putin's strategy is simple: kill so many civilians that
Zelensky is forced to accept a peace on Putin's terms, even though Putin is the one losing.
This is the reason why Russia bombed a maternity hospital, killing pregnant women
and their unborn children. It's the reason why they bombed a theater clearly marked with the
world 'children' on both the front and back yards. And it's the reason why their troops
have been recorded opening fire on civilian vehicles and civilians standing in bread lines,
in videos too graphic for us to share with you here. They have even routinely attacked
convoys of civilians fleeing conflict areas through humanitarian corridors they established
themselves- only to close them hours later and open fire on anyone stuck within them.
Russia's strategy is to cause a humanitarian crisis so terrible, Zelensky will have to admit
defeat, even though- and we can't stress this enough- Russia is losing this war.
But Ukrainians aren't giving up, and Putin's terror campaign is backfiring,
galvanizing an estimated 15,000 foreign volunteers to come to Ukraine's defense in just one month.
Many of these are amateurs with little more than a willingness to help defend Ukraine,
but many more of these are highly trained professionals from militaries all across the West,
who bring years of experience fighting in the Middle East to bear on incompetent Russian forces.
As this invasion progresses, we'll learn more about the true vulnerabilities and deficiencies
of the Russian war machine- but as of right now it's clear that Russia is no
longer the second most powerful military in the world. In fact,
they're only the second most powerful military inside Ukraine.
Now go check out What If Russia Invades Ukraine, or click this other video instead!