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How Defense Experts Got Ukraine Wrong

The standard analysis of Russia and Ukraine paid almost no attention to the documented corruption of the Russian military, the rote nature of its exercises, and the failure of attempts to professionalize it. Far from having an abundance of well-trained personnel akin to American and British soldiers, Russian forces consisted for the most part of conscripts who had been bribed or coerced into signing up for a second year of duty in the same old abusive system. Many commentators wrongly compared Vladimir Putin's forces to their Western counterparts, yielding predictions that Russia would employ "shock and awe" against the Ukrainians - as if its air force had experience and organization similar to that of the United States. But the Russian military was not a somewhat smaller and less effective version of America's. It was a brutal, deeply flawed, and altogether inferior armed force.

The analytic failure in Ukraine makes a strong case for something so often lacking in military analysis and the academic world more generally: intellectual humility.

This deserter's story documents exactly what's articulated above as it regards the supplying and readiness of the average Russian conscripts and lower level officers.. Due to the immense corruption and criminality endemic to Russia's military, is it really far-fetched to ask whether their nuclear arsenal might be more of another Potemkin village in pieces and parts as well?