A woman weeps at the coffin of her dead son, Alexei.
She’d last seen him alive just a few weeks before when he was recruited to serve in Ukraine.
He had no combat experience whatsoever.
After merely a few days of training, he joined the Semyonovsky regiment on the front line.
Two weeks later, his mother was told that he’d died heroically for his country.
Alexei’s story is a true one, and just one of the problems plaguing Russia’s military
right now.
Poor training, dare we say criminally inadequate training, is one reason Russia’s military
is failing right now.
It’s the prominent reason why young men like Alexie are getting to the battlefield
and thinking out loud, I don’t know what to do.
It’s why some men don’t want to be there.
At times, the proverbial blind have led the blind.
Suffice it to say, the effect on troop morale has been devastating.
We’ll talk about declining morale in depth soon.
First, we want to discuss hardware issues.
Russia has a lot of them, and Ukraine has a lot of help in the hardware department.
The aid parade for Ukraine has become an ever-expanding phenomenon.
In terms of military spending, Russia is one of the highest-spending countries in the world.
In 2021, it placed 5th on the list of the highest defense budgets behind the UK, India,
China, and the US.
The amount of money it spent was reported to be $65.9 billion.
The US was a whopping $800.7 billion.
Things have changed somewhat since those budgets were planned.
Reuters reported in September 2022 that Russia plans to spend “$600 billion on defense
and security by 2025.”
How can Russia even afford that?
Over in the US, it was reported in June that a Senate Armed Services Committee voted to
approve military spending of $858 billion for 2023.
The Defense Security in the UK has also said that the country, in spite of current economic
woes and now-pervasive food banks, will dramatically increase its military spending.
In terms of the percentage of its GDP, Russia spends more on defense than the other top
spenders, although the US isn’t too far behind.
For 2021, Ukraine spent about $5 billion on defense, which was more of its GDP than Russia,
the US, and the UK spent in relation to their GDPs.
Even so, Russia will soon be spending a ton of money, its people’s money.
Money it doesn’t have.
This will be problematic.
As a British journalist recently said, “Russia can't afford Putin's war in Ukraine.”
Money, or lack thereof, is a major issue for Russia, especially as time goes on.
And notice how the journalist called it Putin’s war, not Russia’s war.
This emphasis on Putin is very important.
It isn’t the first time that Russia is straining its finances to retain some political authority
in the world.
The country was economically unstable since the end of the Cold War.
Vladimir Putin, who would soon be on good terms with the US, only came to power because
he unofficially agreed not to go after the oligarchs who took advantage of the chaos
that came after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That was ok with the West.
Just to give you an example of what we mean, 22 years ago, when Putin was Russia's acting
president, he was described in the New York Times Magazine with the words “utterly professional,”
“a star,” “sensitive,” “a man we can do business with,” a “liberal, humane,
and decent European.”
Meanwhile, the Russian people watched on as their country was being pillaged.
Many discerning people distrusted Putin, as well as the Western capitalists.
This is important to understand for this show today.
The Russian public does not want to suffer like that again.
Many of them are not supportive of another costly war, even if they do hate the west.
This is one of Russia’s fundamental problems in this war.
A lot of Russians have become skeptical of their country’s leadership and the expensive
shenanigans it gets up to, and widespread public skepticism is never a good thing for
a war effort.
Sure, Putin’s approval rating has gone from 67% to 77% over the last year, but as more
bodybags containing sons return to their mothers, we might see more support for the West and
less support for perfidious Putin.
The US and Putin know very well what happens when a country stretches itself too thin where
cash is involved.
With the Ukraine situation, the US and UK might just be biding their time while bringing
economically-struggling Russia to its already-scuffed knees.
This is partly the reason why the US has spent at least $54 billion on aid to Ukraine.
It’s why some Democratic and Republican politicians want to spend much more.
Money matters a lot in this war, and Ukraine has no shortage of very rich countries happy
to bankroll the excessively pricey conflict.
The numbers keep changing, but some sources say the US has already spent about $25 billion
in military aid alone, with the rest being humanitarian aid and other kinds of help.
The UK comes next, with a military-only aid package of just over $4 billion.
Next is Poland ($1.8 billion), then Germany ($1.2 billion), and then Canada ($1.03 billion).
As we said, these numbers are changing all the time since new packages keep getting approved.
For instance, bipartisan legislators in the US recently introduced a bill to give the
Pentagon emergency powers to sell as many weapons as it wants to Ukraine.
The 50-odd countries that are sending aid to Ukraine are collectively spending over
$100 billion, although it should be said that some countries are sending warm gloves and
toothbrushes while others are sending very expensive modern weapons.
Meanwhile, Russia’s military aid from around the globe adds up to something close to the
value of a brass button.
Russia isn’t getting financial aid, although it’s said Belarus is offering non-economic
aid, and there are tens of thousands of mercenaries fighting for Russia.
Still, judging economic aid for Russia and Ukraine is like comparing Mount Everest to
a mouse.
As for China, the alliance of the US with some Asian nations might be enough to make
China concerned, but so far, it hasn’t openly offered support for Russia’s war effort.
Even those who say the conflict is a US proxy war have condemned Russia.
We’re trying to say that Russia isn’t going to get any considerable help soon, and
help for Ukraine is seemingly bottomless.
Right now, things are looking like one of those Us Vs. Rest of the World soccer matches.
It’s like the old movie, Escape to Victory, when the evil Nazi guards and the mixed-nationality
POW good guys played a soccer game.
Guess who wins?
So, one of Russia’s biggest problems is the fact it is fighting this war alone against
a country that is supported almost on a global scale.
This cannot be underestimated.
Sure, the US and UK aren’t officially sending soldiers to fight on the front lines, even
if some of citizens in those countries would like that.
Instead, what they’re sending in aid is indispensable to Ukraine’s war effort.
In June, it was reported that the UK just sent over 6,500 shoulder-mounted anti-armor
weapons and Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine.
It sent hundreds of millions of dollars of what the press just called “lethal weapons.”
Some of the packages included M109 howitzers, anti-tank weapons, multiple-launch rocket
systems, and hundreds of air defense missiles.
As for the US, it’s raining lethal weapons down on Ukraine, reminiscent of a biblical
flood.
It’s like a supermarket sweep for Ukraine but with weapons instead of groceries.
The US has also sent scores of Javelin anti-tank missiles, as well as billions of dollars in
stinger anti-aircraft missiles, helicopters, counter-artillery, Humvees, electronic warfare
detection systems, M777 howitzers, armored personnel carriers, light anti-armor weapons,
AT4 anti-armor systems, and the list goes on and on.
You might wonder how this has affected Russia’s war effort.
The answer is in a big way.
If you’ve been following what’s going on, you’ll know that the Ukraine advance
later in the year pushed the Russians out of their strongholds.
Towns were liberated, only for the liberators to find mass graves and what the western media
referred to as a giant scrap heap of Russian tanks.
You’ll notice in the list of lethal weapons we just talked about, many of the tools the
west provided can be very effective at taking out tanks.
After the Russians had retreated from those strongholds, after months of being there and
wreaking havoc on locals, masses of tanks were left – sometimes with the burned bodies
of young Russian soldiers inside them.
In part thanks to all that aid, Ukraine has been kicking the living daylights out of Russian
tanks.
And we aren’t just talking about the older tanks, the T-62s and T-72s, but some of the
newer T-90s.
Russia has always been a leading nation when it comes to tank tech, but right now, its
tank strategy sucks.
Let’s just say for now that many young Russian soldiers are not too keen on getting into
one of those tanks.
The chances of being incinerated are high.
All for a war they might not properly understand or don’t want to be a part of.
If Ukraine wasn’t being helped, to conflict would turn out very differently.
You already know Ukraine doesn’t have a massive military budget.
It only has 200,000 active personnel compared to Russia’s 850,000 active personnel.
Ukraine only has about 2,500 tanks of its own, although it has lost some recently, too.
Russia has about 12,000 tanks, even though it’s been losing about ten a day since Ukraine
advanced.
So, make no mistake, all that aid is considerably helping Ukraine.
But the problem for Russia isn’t just about machines.
Its tactics have been less than brilliant.
Its support of troops has been lacking at times.
For instance, Russian tanks should have the requisite modern armor to defend themselves,
but that’s often not what’s happened.
Russian tank crews have complained that they have been ordered to advance at times when
there hasn’t been adequate reconnaissance.
That’s insane.
But worse, the tanks are often out in the open, not moving with sufficient infantry
and artillery.
You don’t have to be a military genius to know that shouldn’t happen.
Even after playing your first game of Risk, you’ll understand that.
When these tanks are left so vulnerable, all those Ukrainian anti-tank weapons do their
worst.
At times, Russian tanks have been sitting ducks when fired upon from close range by
all those Javelins and New Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons that the UK and US have
been so kind to send over.
As the BBC reported, “US-supplied anti-tank weapons have been among the most effective
weapons in Ukraine's arsenal.”
Since these weapons aim for the top of the tanks, where they are the weakest, they result
in something called pop-tops.
That means when the turret is blown off.
It almost always means the three men inside die.
It’s an awful way to go, we expect.
How do you think Russian soldiers feel about this?
The Russians have lost tanks en masse (maybe about 2,500), and a good portion of them have
been abandoned.
Their crews just got out and ran for their lives.
Some soldiers have said they will never return to the front line.
What they saw there was strategic blunder after strategic blunder.
They felt way too vulnerable, as though they were being sent to their deaths.
It wasn’t a fight at all.
It was an annihilation.
One of the Russian soldiers later said, “We were like blind kittens.
I'm shocked by our army.
It wouldn't cost much to equip us.”
Some of the tanks didn’t have proper armor.
Tanks should have explosive reactive armor or active armor, but reports state that some
Russian tank crews had taken to covering their turrets with wood or with iron cages they’d
found.
They were doing tank DIY, which might sound funny if you’ve never heard the screams
of your friends being burned alive.
Remember we talked about Russia being financially stretched?
Is that affecting how well these tanks are performing?
Analysts have been scratching their heads at the heavy losses of Russian tanks.
They say those tanks should have the right armor to protect against these types of attacks,
and even though anti-tank weapons can still be catastrophic to an armored machine, they
shouldn’t have been going down as fast as they have.
The analysts have said it could be a problem with maintenance of the armor, or perhaps
the absence of armor, or the crews not being trained in ERA systems.
Experts are saying that Russian tank armor is proving to be about eight times less effective
than the tank armor that NATO uses.
This could be a matter of money, lack of expertise, a lack of good leadership, or all those things
combined.
This dubious doctrine has often led to tanks grouping together, forming a great big sitting
duck traffic jam.
At times, the tank crews have been moving without any support, and when they have support,
it’s often from guys who were flipping burgers or fixing someone’s plumbing not a few weeks
earlier.
Low morale is the reason many Russians don’t want to fight.
It’s why some have abandoned their tanks or their posts pretty quickly.
One Russian soldier said he was among 78 guys in his brigade that refused orders and said
they would fight no more.
He told a journalist, “I'm morally exhausted.
There is absolutely no trust in the authorities and the higher command...“I’m tired.
Homesick.
My daughter was born three months ago.”
Another said, “I thought a long time about it and came to the decision.
I understood that I had to refuse so I could stay alive.”
There are so many reports saying the same things.
And let’s not forget that due to the retreat of Russian troops, when Ukraine advanced and
took back thousands of square miles from the Russians, what was left behind was often of
some military value.
Ukrainian ammo, for instance, can often be used with captured Russian tanks.
There’s also the question of centralization.
Chechens have been fighting for the Russian army, as has the national guard, as have soldiers
hired by private contractors, plus mercenaries, and with this comes the fact that they are
fighting without a centralized structure.
An analyst said about this, “There are multiple strands of the Russian army with their own
agendas, tactics, and reasons for fighting.”
There have been reports of Russian draft officers approaching guys in the streets and signing
them up for fighting, what the press called aggressive recruitment.
One guy said he worked in IT and should have been exempted from the draft, but to his utter
astonishment, he later found himself saying farewell to his wife and four-year-old kid
and heading to the front.
He did not want to fight.
He didn’t know how to fight.
Men like him have been getting just 5 to 10 days of basic training and a further 5 to
15 days of unit training, and then they are packed off to the battlefield.
To say this is not good enough would be as obvious as saying you should not enter your
cat into a swimming competition with dogs.
You guys and girls watching this who are old enough for a military draft, how do you think
you’d fair after that amount of training?
How do you think you’d deal with hearing your buddies being incinerated in a tank by
weapons you know have been sent to your enemy by numerous nations?
Do you think you could cope?
Many Russians can’t, and that’s why there are reports coming in all over the place about
Russian men taking devastating and drastic actions to not fight.
We can’t say what they did exactly, but we imagine you can guess.
As for Alexie, as you know, he had just a few days of training.
He went to the frontline without knowing the first thing about combat.
If you’d asked him about land warfare strategy or tank armor, he might have looked at you
like you had asked what he thinks about string theory.
Russia has not been very open about sending guys like Alexie into the bloody battle.
A journalist for RT said this was plain wrong.
She wrote, “Military leaders, now is not the time to lie.
You have no right to lie, and now it is a crime.”
Alexie’s father simply said, “My son has died, what am I for?”
This kind of outside criticism is not good for Russia’s war effort.
It should be said that Alexie wasn’t forced to fight.
He just did what was asked of him.
A Russian lawyer familiar with the case said, “He didn’t try to get out of his service.
He gathered his things together and went.
He acted bravely.”
He was brave, for sure, but if you were able to go back in time and ask that drunkard of
philosopher Socrates what he thought about this, he’d tell you that there’s a fine
line between bravery and ignorance.
Alexie and other men like him shouldn’t be fighting in a war after so little training.
Russia is not Sparta.
Most men know nothing about mortal combat.
As has happened in history around the world, Russia has offered some prisoners early release
or immediate release if they fight, but are prisoners your best option?
Often men become prisoners from a lack of self-control; perhaps a childhood of trauma
has led to their frontal lobes not kicking in when they get mad.
This is the last thing you want in a war.
History tells us that convicts don’t usually make the best soldiers.
You don’t want lunatics fighting for you; anyway, some prisoners might not be too fond
of the state that locked them up.
Do you think they’d risk their lives for it?
And if some rather violent psychopaths ended up in control of Ukrainian towns and their
citizens, what do you think they might do with total impunity to kill?
Psychos don’t win wars.
All-out enraged assaults don’t win fights; strategy and emotional control do.
Not only that, but many of the best-trained men are dead, and they will be hard to replace.
In September, the BBC reported that 1,000 Russian officers had succumbed.
It was BBC Russia, so we had to translate, but here’s how the article started:
“The BBC, based on open sources, managed to identify more than 6,020 Russian soldiers
who died in the war in Ukraine.
Particularly sensitive losses were suffered by special forces units, as well as junior
officers.
It will not be easy to make up for their lack of a Russian army.”
Russia’s soldiers, the ones properly trained and with combat experience, are educated in
what Russia is an expert at.
That is short-lasting, hyper-intensive combat.
The Russian military was virtually designed for this, and this war is anything but that,
while Ukraine has been getting ready for long-term warfare for close to a decade.
Russia might well be playing the long game here, but there’s no doubt that it has done
badly recently and morale, for the most part, is about as high as Hades after an earthquake.
Nonetheless, as bad have things have looked of late, Russia is still a military powerhouse
for a reason.
It’s made some mistakes, sure.
Some of its troops have watched them and are not impressed, but by the time this show comes
out, maybe Russia will have improved matters.
Despite these losses, we should not underestimate the Russian military.
Just as this analyst recently warned in The Guardian:
“Russian doctrine – the theory of how the army should fight – is clear, precise,
well evidenced, and conceptually elegant.
Russian doctrine is often far ahead of western military theory.
This creates a methodological challenge for intelligence assessments of Russian operations.”
This pretty much contradicts what you’ve heard today, but the failures of the Russian
military we’ve discussed have happened.
The support we’ve told you Ukraine has is very much real.
Ok, so what’s behind Russia’s underperformance besides what we’ve discussed?
The same analyst we just quoted said Russia’s massive weapons arsenal is from several generations,
and that makes it quite inflexible.
The more losses Russia faces, the more equipment comes out of the storage warehouses, and so,
on the whole, you have more technical inflexibility.
When you add it all up, and we haven’t even gone into the corruption in the Russian military
and the present lack of exceptional leadership, things aren’t looking good for Russia.
The number of young folks that are willing to fight is getting smaller, and the number
of troops in the field is diminishing.
They are outnumbered and out-moraled (we know that’s not a word).
The public might soon turn on Putin, especially when military spending increases.
We just hope when the straw that breaks the camel’s back is dropped, no one makes a
grab for the nuclear launch codes.
The natural thing to watch now is “What if Russia Launched a Nuclear Bomb (Minute
by Minute).”
Or, forget about war and take a ride in the Infographics time machine in “The End of
Civilization (Century by Century).”