@@clintonreisig until they do; wouldn't be the first time. You probably wont find many Germans wanting to fights Austrians either, on the other hand Prussia and Austria fighting over supremacy is pretty much a good part of our history.
So much for the great German military minds like Guderian and Manstein. The German greats are turning in their graves over the low quality analysis of their for-bearers (General Kulat).
The truth is simply this. It is far better to overestimate an enemy than to underestimate. If you are going to be surprised it is better to find out the enemy is weaker than you thought.
That is essentialy how you get the money. At least in USA. If Russia launches lets say one new submarine, you as a admiral will make statement how dangerous system is that, and how competent is its crew and then you will ask your politicians for money on 3 new submarines. You will get 2. So you are intentionally hyping the threat. And because intelligence agencies are watching each other they will just reflect their own wrong assumptions and create echo chamber...
That's cool when you get to actual fighting, but if it's an information war, it can cause the would-be allies to avoid supporting you because they don't beleive in your victory and don't want their weaponry to fall into enemy's hands. Which is in fact what happened. It makes me really sad to think that if the fame of Russian army wasn't as overblown, more support would come sooner, and Ukraine could be in a better position right now...
@@TomasLKarlik I also think that at least in the U.S the leadership was worried about another Afghanistan. They could have sent in more equipment before this invasion started but probably remembered what happened in Afghanistan and at least considered the government would collapse and all those weapons would just end up in the hands of Russia. In the case with Afghanistan the Afghan army had a lot of troops and was well equipped but the leadership structure all the way up to the president collapsed.
@@fuckgoogle2554 That’s the big joke, no? The big boss of a criminal syndicate plans the ultimate heist: to steal an entire country. But the plan falls apart when the big boss discovers that his criminal organization is riddled with . . . . criminals.
But did they go to great lengths to cover up the corruption? Or were the higher echelons just not asking questions because they were getting their skim? If Putin was getting 5 or 10% of the vig, where did he think it came from?
Around 25 minutes Stanimir mentioned "ghost soldiers." Lately I've been reading quite a lot of stuff about the Cosa Nostra and honestly no-show jobs are one of the primary bread winners for those guys. They take the salary but there's no worker. I wonder how many Russian colonels/battalion tactical group commanders just reported wrong numbers in their battalion tactical group numbers and pocketed the difference themselves.
South Vietnam in the 1970's is an example. Shadow soldiers were created by officials pocketing the money but not recruiting. Spoiler: it didn't go well.
What I saw in this video is completely identical to my own experience during army service. I was a conscript in one of the “elite” motorized infantry division in the western military district. Corruption, low quality the majority of soldiers and vehicles are completely true. Unfortunately, not only western analysts had a such overestimated view. Before the war and even now numerous simple Russian civilians continue to associate the army with pared which they see on Red Square during Victory Day. However, this is just a show which dramatically far away from the real stuff. Thanks for interesting video and perfect analyzing
Brilliant stuff. Stanimir Dobrev did the military analyst equivalent of forensic accounting. He used lower level open source intel to get a more complete picture of the Russian army.
@@BtappinHD The Second Battle of Fallujah lasted 6 weeks. It pitted 10000 US and 3000 allied troops against 4000 insurgents. Obviously, with Russian-style tactics of leveling cities and murdering civilians, the battle would've been even shorter.
@@BtappinHD I find it hard to believe the invasion of Ukraine is anything to boast about. Just look at all the losses Russia has sustained in 100 days. Then again, Russia doesn't care about losses of human life, right?
Recommendation for you. There is a RUclipsr named Perun who made a recent video called How Corruption Destroys Armies. It is a very detailed and thoughtful analysis that often references the current state of Russian military affairs, yet outlines principles that can be applied to various areas and topics outside of that.
Perun doesnt know anything. Do you even know what his background or expertise is? ZERO. He is just proficient at making a power point preso based on someone else's dubious work.
@@Internetbutthurt so you are saying to completely disregard all of his points? I believe its unwise to completely disregard someone's insight due to not having prior military expertise. Also, he dubiously studied German and Soviet tactics and strategic outlook in the Eastern Front during World War Two, similar to what Bernard does.
For the same reason most financial analysts were surprised by the 2008 financial crisis. The more one knows about a subject, the more facts one can apply confirmation bias to, and thus the better one can twist those facts to fit a preconceived notion. Most analysts and experts have some pet theory or prediction that they want the facts to fit. Most intelligence agencies want to form conclusions that will make their political bosses happy.
You're are a victim of the very mentioned bias by yourself : ) The 2008 was anticipated. It was just silly willingness of the many to believe that no crisis will happen and that they still can play into "inflate the prices" game. But its limits do exist.
@@worldoftancraft He dident say he was surprised he said many analysts were surprised. Your both in agreement that there are forces that are interested in good news while pretending the bad news isent real. Just like the climate change conversations.
If you over hype the capabilities of a potential enemy, you'll most likely get a nice cash injection into military-defensive complex as a whole and your agency in particular. Win-win. US alphabet agencies have been playing this game for decades during the Cold War.
It’s Absolutely nuts, I was fully convinced the Russian military was nearly on par with the U.S. in 2022. 2.5 years later and they can’t even take one of poorest countries in Eurasia. Russia is learning, but boy did they shit the bed on this invasion.
I feel like they treated them as a credible threat because if you don't treat an enemy as credible when they are it's far worse then if you you treat them as credible when they aren't
They are are a credible threat to Non-Near-Peer border states. They don't see facing off with US, much less US+(USplusNATO) as a situation they can realistically attempt to match. (That's why they are so quick to use #AtomicRhetoric🚀
To get a government contract you have to kick back a sizeable share, so that has to be made up for by cutting corners in what you deliver: we saw examples of how abandoned Pantsir missile transporters, which should have been running on expensive imported Michelin tires, were using cheaper Chinese replacements. Which means that somebody pocketed the difference and hoped that nobody would notice.
In the Summer of 1992 I was a reservist attached to a Forward Artillery Observer unit of a European army's 12-gun battery of 105mm howitzer. After 11 months of training as a signalman i was looking forward to my first live-fire exercise. All went well until a Colonel arrived to view a 'fire for effect' battery shoot. A Captain i had previously respected gave me a Toys'R'Us type walkie talkie and told me to crouch out of sight. A 'random' target was selected...shots hit everything but the designated target... until we adjusted over unencrypted comms. All appeared resolved. That night we fired on a moving hillside spotlight target, this was rehearsed for weeks before... '7 sec. delay...drop 300, west 400'.... The battery was congratulated by the Colonel, $180,000 of ammo was expended, all boxes ticked. BUT we still couldn't do the fundamental task, i.e. send rounds to a target with any efficiency (let alone security). The same army i served in could scrape an under-strength battalion annually to perform UN duties (more box-ticking). The same thing has happened on a vast scale for the Russians. They can slap about Syrians, Georgians and Chechens with limited capabilities and zero air assets but their large-scale ground game is abysmal. Criminal negligence from the top is being paid for by Russian troops and worse Ukrainian civilians targeted it seems by the acre. Truly tragic.
"A European Army" is pretty vague in the context of 1992. Western European NATO army or a former Warsaw Pact nation whose government had disintegrated within the previous 24 months? With the latter I would expect some serious teething problems as the entire country realigns to an entirely different political and military system.
@@marsnz1002 I would expect this kind of behaviour in any army, even the best ones. It is a kind of institution which is excellent for status quo preservation more than actual problem solving. -transparency : delicate (which, in the worst case, means : no one will ever look over your shoulder) -culture of authority (which gives a mechanical reluctance to contesting a colleague's wrongdoing : you would hinder their authority. This especially becomes a problem when you yourself know you are not crystal clean) -dilution of responsibility (this is the hindrance of any administration. Layers of hierarchy brings individuals to not endorsing actual responsibility on problems. It's the most efficient way to keep a system still, ban any risk-taking, and shut down any alerts on real problems.) Actually, in my european country, we often have to wait until independent reporters or civil agents report a problem (loudly) for the army to take measures. (And not always. Like, we've got guys with swastiks tattoed on the torso, and our headquarters say "nah, this is fine") (but for training, for example implementation of airsoft replicas instead of blank weapons, it was independant civil persons who provoked the army to move and do something.)
@@marsnz1002 "Alan Burke" is an amazingly British name. It's possible it was the British Army (went to Bosnia for "UN boxticking") but I doubt his inference about capability given that it walked across the Falklands to slap the Argentines and also spent two decades patrolling Northern Ireland. You don't do that without massive casualties if you don't know what you're doing. The alternative is he's Irish and he's bitching about the military capabilities of a neutral nation the size of New Zealand and in danger of being invaded by literally no-one.
Up to a point. If you overestimate the enemy too much, you’ll surrender without fighting. It’s happened before. You’d be amazed at some of the bluffs that historical commanders have pulled.
Well... If he actually has the newspaper articles that the alleged 'help wanted' ads were in, his arguments would be solid. It really depends if his opinions and accusations are backed by evidence.
The Russian military loop. 1. Russian military obviously poorly equipped with no training, poor leadership, outdated tactics, no maintainance, etc. 2. Russia shows off new high tech shit to prove it's actually strong. 3. West skeptical, says Russian shit is useless. 4. Russian shit shown not to be useless. West panics. Forgets Russia isn't strong. 5. Russia forgets it isn't actually strong. Invades Japan/Finland/Ukraine, throws outdated, unmaintained equipment with everything that isn't bolted down scavenged by the troops for survival, and uncoordinated human waves of troops at wall, then puts their officers against the wall when it doesn't work. 6. Repeat. (optionally the disgruntled soldiers help someone overthrow the government).
Nice fantasy you got there, but, no. Russia does not lack training, nor leadership skills. Russia is fighting a numerically superior enemy and has won every single major battle it has fought in the Ukraine (with exception of some smaller, less important battles). Mariupol was defended by at least 8,100 troops many of whom were elite, battlehardened troops who had years of preperation yet lost big-time to Russian and DPR forces. The Ukrainians managed to so easily lose a very important bridgehead in the Donbass (Izyum) in spite of having enormous terrain advantage and failed in every single one of their attempts to retake the area. Losing the town of Liman in a few hours and allowing their front to collapse in Popasna shows that the RAF is far from what they are portrayed in the media. Russia does not throw human waves of troops (and neither did they do that in WW2, for the most part). This is an unsubstantiated allegation promulgated by Western liars and older uneducated folk. In fact, Russia is making slow gains not because of Ukrainian so-called ''resistance,'' but because Russia wants to reduce unnecessary casualties on their side. A minimum of 400,000 shells are fired by the Russians per day - it is clear that they want to soften the Ukrainians up a bit before advancing, and when they advance, they advance very fast, as we have seen in Popasna.
That's not how they do it though. Russia has been slow because they've been doing the exact opposite of human waves but instead waves of artillery and rocket batteries. This war has been a mechanized and industrial war, not that WW2 Soviet bullshit your speaking off lol
@@fegelfly7877 'has won every single major battle it has fought in the Ukraine (with exception of some smaller, less important battles)' like the really -big- small battle for Kyiv or the really -big- small battle for Kharkiv, a city only 40km from the border that they couldn't even encircle
That was a remarkably insightful interview, thank you for bringing us this information. I think a lot of us in the west had misconceptions about Russia due to previous history that colored how we perceive Russia in the present. This just goes to the wisdom of being willing to accept propaganda for the smoke screen it is and look for low-level, harder to control sources when you are searching for the truth.
Same here -- the idea that any army could be so corrupt was beyond my imagination. If I had read, a year ago, that army professionals were stealing shoes from conscripts, or that officers were embezzling and misreporting so much, I'd have wondered what was wrong with the analyst, not the Russian army. But throw in three months of obvious ineptitude in the field, a level of incompetence and lack of proficiency which boggles my mind, and now I am a believer. I can understand why professional analysts were unwilling to stick their necks out -- they probably didn't believe it themselves!
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 Well i knew that things like this happened but i thought that it only happened in the units for the third line not everywhere. On the other side as far as i know many of the russian soldiers in the Ukraine come from the more rural regions of the russian federation.
”I think a lot of us in the west had misconceptions about Russia due to previous history that colored how we perceive Russia in the present” But shouldn't that result in the west underestimating the russians instead of overestimating them? After all russian history is full of military failure.
@@Talashaoriginal ”On the other side as far as i know many of the russian soldiers in the Ukraine come from the more rural regions of the russian federation.” Russia has used most of their elites units and in fact is the western military district who has underperformed the most.
I'm just watching the Russian military advance, and the Ukrainian army crumble. And wonder where any of this discussion is still relevant 4 days later. Apart from being pure projection, that is. It is now obvious that the average Ukrainian conscripted soldier on the front line does not get the weapons given by the West. It is also obvious that the Russians are advancing , not going backwards, and that their morale seems high. Which is normal for an army that is if not welcome, at least appreciated by the local population.
@@rogerthat4545 They are now retreating or have retreated in the last 48 hours from Sieverodonest, Yarova, Tetyanivka, Svyatohirsk, Bairak, Peremoha and Shestakove, among others. There are many channels giving daily accounts of the fighting, which use boith Russian and Ukrainian sources. "Military Summary" and "Defense Politics Asia" being two of the most popular channels. The Ukrainian army started digging trenches and building bunkers 8 years ago, and the Russian, LPR and DPR forces are first obliterating them with massive artillery fire before advancing. This limits their losses quite a bit. It's not that slow, but it's got to be slower than when the US army drone bombs Afghanis riding donkeys, which is the type of fighting Western armies are used to these days.
@@rogerthat4545 Oh. And Patrick Lancaster has interviewed many residents of Mariupol and other cities. All Russian-speaking residents are quite happy with being liberated by the Russian forces, and that's about 90% of the total population of the Donbass and Eastern Ukraine. Check his YT channel, then decide for yourself.
@@tikabass "Patrick Lancaster"? Let me guess, he has very convincing videos of people dressed in civilian clothes saying that Ukraine is attacking them, but offers no actual evidence? Can you explain how they can tell the difference between Russian and Ukrainian artillery?
reading the local weeklies to secure vital strategic secrets out of closed socities is nothing new : in WWII , clever intelligence individuals who kew German culture intimately realized there was a strong local tradition to publicly mark the death of all military carerrists. Situated in Switzerland they got german small town weeklies, did a statistical analysis and realized the huge constant death toll on the eastern front even in late 1941……
The original book "Megatrends" described how the Western Allies had large departments that measured publication inches in Axis newspapers to conduct trends analysis. How much Nazi newsprint was being devoted to agriculture each month ? What about stories on the Chinese War in Imperial Japanese newspapers? What about rationing of newspaper and ink?
The best analysis I have seen. Instead of just grabbing the low hanging fruit, and accepting it as fact, the techniques used to check on the "official facts" was very well done and very comprehensive. Thank you both for your work.
Several military officers I talk to on occasion were dumbfounded by how badly the Russians did. There was a real sense of "I've spent years training to fight these jokers?" From them.
Surprises also happen the other way around. I served with ex NVA (East Germany) officers. And they told me how shocked they were, realising that they sacrificed their life to fight the expected nato attack only to find out that those plans never existed after they had access to the nato data.
@@sebastianriemer1777, this is typical for totalitarian regimes - pumping up their population with defensive war rethroric, everyone around is an enemy and wants to destroy our precious state. And every war they begin is explained by "the enemy wanted to attack us first!". This is same for Hitler, for and it's the same for Putin in 2008 and 2022. This is exactly the kind of bullshit you can make millions people believe when they live in isolation (even partial), and the state controls the media.
I mean they're making ground now, against entrenched enemies. They've also learned from their mistakes early in the war and have upped air sorties from 200, in March, to 300 in May. They may not be steamrolling Ukraine, but they are beating them.
Not to mention that the whole world is supporting Ukrain rn both financially and militarily with weapons. People tend to forget that Ukrain is not fighting against Russia alone.
@@yajamanvamsikrishna509 People also underestimate how big Ukraine is. They've already taken land the size of the Benelux countries, with only 200k troops. All things considering they're doing very well.
Defensive wars generally require less training and professionalism, as the fighters are highly focused as they are defending their homeland. But offensive wars on another country's soil require extreme degrees of professionalism and training, like the Germans had in the early 40's.
🟡🟡Why thugs are upside down in America?? Not long ago recessions seemed to strike America roughly once a decade. But only two years after the first lockdowns, the business cycle is turning at a sickening speed and another one already seems to be on its way. If you are like most people, your memory of downturns will be dominated by the past two- the financial heart attack in 200709 and the pandemicinduced collapse in 2020. Both were severe and highly unusual. By their standards, America’s next recession will almost certainly be milder and more pedestrian. But because the world economy, asset markets and America’s politics are all fragile, it may yet have nasty and unpredictable consequences
I honestly didn't think Putin was going to invade. One reason was that I saw reports on the appalling conditions the troops on the "exercise" were living under, sleeping like sardines in unheated rooms, etc. But the main reason was that I had looked up the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces. Which was about the same size in active personal as the russian forces in theatre. I simply couldn't imagine that anyone would be dumb enough to try a major assault against a trained, experienced and reasonably well equipped regular army that was both prepared and had the advantage of defence without a massive numerical advantage. I figured there was no way Putin would be dumb enough to try such an assault without AT LEAST a two-one advantage (I would personally have wanted more, but I figured that 600k troops would be way, way out of Russia's ability to concentrate). Guess if I was surprised on the 24th...
Main advantage Russia has was in armoured units and Air Force , thier armoured advantage was neutralised by ATGMs in urban areas and their Air Force ran out of stand-off ammunitions and vulnerable to MANPAD while dropping dumb bombs.
Yeah, this operation will be studied by military experts, because Ukraine has 3x numerical advantage and is on defensive, but Russia is still pushing them back.
@@g1y3 Yea, I knew about those advantages. But I figured that defensive warfare, especially defensive urban warfare hasn't really changed. Fundamentally it still always comes down to the boots and blood.
@@Daneclaw he's counting every civillian that could potentially turn into armed militia The numbers check out when you consider that the Russian army is fighting the entire able population of Ukraine
Big thank you to Stanimir Dobrev. This is very enlightening. Also thank you Bernard for tackling Russian military corruption. This and Perun's video about it, show the need for militaries to be better funded, more training and more professionalism. I hope my country the Philippines is actually paying attention to all this, because it still has quite alot of problems.
You can also look at economy data of some countries. Some numbers can be tuned with kind of legal matters, but in some economic crisis of the past, there were doubts on chinese numbers especially. The idea was, that district and regional officials were reporting beautified numbers. Some people looked at electrical power generated or used coal and other basic numbers for a better picture of the situation
>I hope my country the Philippines is actually paying attention to all this, because it still has quite alot of problems. bro we both know BBM is gonna sell the country to China anyway
@@captainautism8221I just hoping that won't happen. Duterte tried to change/modify Philippine foreign policy and alliances but failed spectacularly. I hope that BBM gets the same treatment.
It is my opinion that the initial stages of the invasion, were Russia’s attempt to take Ukraine in a “western style” when that failed they resorted back to heavy artillery bombardment, capturing ruins etc.
Lol western style for me it's bombed to pebbles Yugoslavia, Libya separated back into tribes and Vietnam where's no place without traces of the bombing
I agree aswell. The whole western style of invasion didn't work out well for Russia. Which makes sense since the west had a century to build up that style. Russia had 10 years at best.
this was exactly like the old Missile Gap where the US looked at what russia was doing, where it was, and extrapolated and then it turned out it had plateaued instead of increased its efforts
The missile gap was always in US favour & the military industrial complex promoted the lie of soviet superiority to gain support for even more of an imbalance hidden
When my grandfather served in the Soviet army, he did everything from messhall mass fights, to jumping out windows to get away from knife armed armenian gang, catching lobsters because theres no good food while he was naked from lack of clothes with an ak around his neck so no one would dare mock him, being forgotten in a swamp in Belaruss and wintering in a village with the locals after 2 of his 4 men almost died of freezing to death, to allying with a georgian for protection by the georgian gang, .... When my cousin served in modern Latvijas army, his worst complain was how stressful taking the practical exams where because all the superiors are watching. My family are very much highborn nobleman, but in the soviet army you just do what you have to do. Seems the Russijan army hasnt improoved the soviet army inherited, while Latvija build a new one from 0 with NATO help and is much much better off.
Modern Latvian army is rather small and professional, no wonder the difference. I hope it's capable enough to stall the Russians long enough for me to escape Riga before they shoot me in the head Bucha-style :-(
@@stariyczedun Size and profesionalism doesnt matter, its the honor of the people that does. Also run how? If Russija has the strength to take Rīga it has the strength to close to Suvalki gap. If you want to run you should do so long before the war starts.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 staff your army with a socioeconomic equivalent of maskačkas čigāni and pay them 200 eur per month - I doubt much honour would be left. Good point about running though. I hope I will be able to drive my skoda to Kurzeme and hop on the last ferry to old Europe. Somehow. Alternatively Latvian forests can provide hiding for many years even under total occupation.
Unironically the thing that completely broke any delusion(of which I had little to begin with) of the Russian army's competence was a video by a Russian RUclipsr called NFKRZ on Russian obligatory military service. He goes into some detail about the degree to which obligatory service sucks, just how far draft dodging goes and how generally terrible the entire deal is. After that talking to Russians from time to time, especially about their experience(and noting that almost all of them had none despite officially being far past the age that they should've served) clued me in a lot.
@@jnnfccc1794 Yes and no, plenty of countries have had and still have a fairly high quality conscript service(see: Israel). Obviously those conscripts barely compare to their professional counterparts in any way but it's clearly possible to execute well enough. Yet Russia's military fails not only in it's conscripts, but it's regular army is also a complete shambles. Also...there's deeper political reasons why the West has largely gone away from conscripts - Vietnam is a big reason. After Vietnam a lot of countries started only deploying professional troops abroad if not wholly shifting to professional armies. Put simply, people are a lot less sensitive to military interventions with professional armies.
I saw that video; that video was the reason I thought Russia would never invade Ukraine, because their army clearly sucked and wouldn't perform well. I was wrong about the invasion, but correct in my reasoning.
@@The_Crimson_Fucker I mean Israel's conscripts represent how much of the global conscript population by %? Does it even hit 1% after Russia, China and both Koreas are taken into account? There is an exception to every rule. Also technology plays a major role in the move away from conscripts as you need a focused professional for very specific combat roles. Conscripts basically produce a rifleman with no frills, they really cant be used for anything more advanced considering their service spans 2 years max, usually one, and again with some sliver sized country somewhere with an exception.
@@jnnfccc1794 China doesn't tend to use Conscription, they don't need to. South Korea's conscripts tend to be of a higher quality and lower rates of abuse, there's also Switzerland and Norway - Switzerland like Israel represents relatively high quality conscripts. Now all these countries use their conscripts in a variety of roles and one of the most popular uses for conscripts in regards to regular service seems to be rear echelon personnel, regular patrols(see: Israel) and security. On the flip side, North Korea's entire army is conscripts only - they don't have "professionals" as per se - and so on.
Experts don't know what they're talking about. They didn't realize that Ukraine was the most capable army in Europe and that was what Russia was fighting. They have been preparing for this for almost a decade. Not a single Western power have faced such enemy since Vietnam, where the US lost. They were wrong at the start, and still wrong today. They either overestimate or underestimate Russia.
What a cartoon,, Laverov stated in reference to their naked aggression in Ukraine "Russia is not ashamed of showing the world what we are." They should be ashamed, seeing what a extremely bad show of their performance. Hahaha.
Yet another great piece of coverage, where Military History not Visualized measures much better than what I see in the news, when I do have a look at my TV. Well done, and Stanimir Dobrev should be invited back. I will have to rewatch this episode, as it has so many details, that I might have missed too many.
All Stanimir does is reprodusing rumors :) It was also funny to see how russians were doin poorly in conflict with geargians. I mean, they knocked out Geargia in six days. And yet everyone tells how cool us army is wich basically lost all its wars lol
It's true - the 2017 Russian military wasn't the poorly equipped and uncoordinated force that invaded Georgia in 2008. It's an entirely new poorly equipped and uncoordinated force!
Rob Lee's assessment was spot on. The Russian southern districts have been by far the most successful, though eventually stopped after capturing Mariupol, Melitopol, and Kherson. The other's assessment was less correct though.
half of the reason Kherson was so successful is because it was perhaps the only city where FSB actually managed to get a foothold before the war broke out.
@@iannordin5250 I thought that the military commander for Kherson refused to fight. I'm not clear whether he went to Russia or just left Ukraine, maybe neither. I recall Zelensky saying there had been traitors that capitulated in Kherson without fighting. Someone got arrested, and that's all I recall about it.
@@cliffc2546 Basically, the man in charge of the defenses actively sabotaged the entire defense including de-mining roads, dismantling the units stationed there, and closing volunteer recruitment. The Kherson defense forces also refused to blow up the bridges that would have greatly slowed the southern advance and nearly make the place untouchable from the Russian advance.
@@randomclick2826Yes they have. Most of the advancements and villages that Russia has made in the last 2 weeks have been pushed back in the last 3 days. With every village they capture they lose another.
The US and western militaries in general greatly publicize their defficiencies and faults. They do this, because its an excuse to ramp up military spending, and for promotions/work. If the airforce concludes it needs this edge over the russians and says how weak and outliens their defficiencies, congress gives them the moeny and support, and they fix it quickly enough. Especially after Vietnam, the US military basically adopted that entire rhetoric of basically never underestimating their enemy, and to a large extent, overestimating them. Russia on the other hand just wants to act strong, and thats it.
Speaking of Airforce. Russia needs to remember that the CIA has almost the same size Airforce as the USA Airforce has and CIA Airforce did over 80% of all Iraq and Afghanistan sorties,go look it up. Good luck Putin if you think that you're Airforce is the strongest.
That's why having a paranoid MoD is beneficial. By grossly overestimating you're enemies, you'll basically win most of the time, however COIN is where most countries fail, especially if the insurgents you're fighting is fanatical and has better knowledge of the terrain.
Also they looked at least somewhat competent in Syria and Crimea. Furthermore they won in Georgia though that was a shitshow militarily speaking for Russia. Taking ukraine is a different level entirely; instead of a few divisions fighting sporadically, it's the entire ground forces fighting essentially continually with a near peer rival.
@@TheFirebird123456 Also, in previous conflicts they were fighting against armies that they trained and therefore knew how to beat. But in Ukraine, they’re fighting an army that was trained by the West and is using inherently superior tactics that have largely negated the Russian advantage in quantity of equipment and air power and missiles. Russia doesn’t know how to beat these tactics except to try to overwhelm them with numbers, and they can’t change their doctrine because it is inextricably linked with their system of government.
Yeah, despite the support Ukraine is receiving from NATO, people of Russia are STILL able to fight them effectively. Most people are blinded by propaganda saying one side is currently dominating the other... (It's most noticeable with Pro-Ukraine propaganda) However, what is actually happening is that the armies are currently evenly matched despite the supply difference.
Moscow, and the West, believed their own hype. Equipment is only as good as the soldiers using it, the logistics supporting it, and the command and control network directing it.
@@jamesrowlands8971 Really? I've seen several so far. On every front, Kyiv, Kharkov, Severdonesk, Kherson all have seen successful Ukrainian counterattacks. Admittedly they are limited local attacks, but they have been successful and more counterattacks are coming.
I had some quite big doubts about Russian military capabilities. It seemed like every month we used to get a new video of a boondongle. A helicopter crashing at a display, a surface air missile performing somersaults, Kuznetsov deciding to catch fire again. That said I didn't think it would play out like this. I could only ever see Ukrainian getting crushed over a few months due to being completely over matched by Russia. I didn't expect Ukraine to perform well tactically.
I agree. I knew that the Russian army still relied on much Soviet junk because it lacked funds to replace all Soviet tanks, artillery, steel helmets and provide everyone with body armor. I also knew that the Russian military doctrine sucks and is the opposite of auftragstaktik. I did also knew that Russia lacked funds and high technology to keep competing with the western world in top notch high quality weapons... and that T14 Armata and SU57 was both overly hyped in their capapbilities, and they were too expensive for poor Russia to mass produce, and that they would likely be delayed and perhaps not be produced at all. The tolerance of heavy losses might be a strength of the Russian army compared to the west. But otherwise I have been fundamentally unimpressed by the Russian forces. But even I did not expect them to perform as bad as they did. Poor maintance, corruption, overheard communcation, poor morale etc were factors I was unaware of on how bad there were before the war.
@@allewis4008 Well, sinking of Kursk is 22 years ago, basically when Jeltsin was just of his office. So, in hindsight it looks like those problems are only hushed away, and organization is still just as inept. But that is only with the experience's in 2022 combined with what happened in August 2000.
Well,the latest update , ukrainian just push Russian out from severedonetsk. For honest i think they cant do it. But again,they are prepare the war since 8 years ago. What a good news for Ukraine.
Better to overestimate than underestimate a possible foe. Especially when your armed forces funding has to be sourced from an elected body with the majority not being soldiers prior to their new responsibilities.
Too much optimism is dangerous. Too much pessimism is dangerous too. One should always try to be a realist. It is of course easier said than done. Too much optimism can make you take stupid risks and walk into ambushes and have no plan B for escaping because you was too overconfident in your own ability and underestmated your foe. But if you overestmate your foe all the time, then he can psychologically blackmail your country into concessions despite your military is stronger. And in a war you might be paralyzed and too afraid to take risks despite there is a high chance of success and your attacks are very likely to pay off very well, and quickly bring the war to an end for you with a small price for you and a high price for the enemy. So one should try to never over or underestimate an enemy. A realistic view is the best. Then you can avoid stupid overly aggressive mistakes, and you can still sometimes play very aggressive when it pays off.
The point I was trying to make was in regards to funding of forces, that better the funding and R&D be provided to fight a near peer adversary and achieve overkill to reduce friendly casualties as opposed to an underestimation and the extra blood to be spilled from this result.
@@MT-fh1pw Economics and military strategy focus on the best handling of limited resources. Spending enormous amounts of money on one weapon system to achieve overkill, means that you got less money over to spend on other types of weapons. I don't think that would be an effiecent handling of resources, and it would probably create more human losses. Maybe Tiger II was not the best tank for Germany, despite its extra big 88mm gun made both the gun on the Tiger I and panther look weak. And despite its well sloped thick frontal armor was twice as thick as needed. The Germans did achieve an overkill. But they could never build many of this tank. It would have been better if they had upscaled production of their other tanks instead like the panther. Israel could upgrade their Merkava tanks if they wanted to. Then they could achieve overkill with mounting a 15cm gun on their tank. But it would be pointless to fire a mini nuke on an old Soviet garbage tank that its neighbouring countries use. 15cm ammo is more expensive than the 12cm. It takes more time to reload. You can carry fewer rounds of ammunition inside a tank etc. So I don't think upgrading the gun on Merkava is the most pressing need of Israels army. It might do other better things with its military budget... spending it on the airforce, or on the infantry or whatever..
"Why we continue to be wrong about Russia", there I changed it for you. The hubris some are displaying is incredible. You miss the forest for the trees while Russia grabs the Ukrainian east.
You should look into Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok article from January 2022 entitled 'Mass Fire attack on Ukraine', where he covered a lot of the likely issues the Russians would face and how the military and government in Russia was massively misjudging the situation and were very overconfident. He mentions foreign volunteers and various other factors.
@@nagantm441 Bleeding a lot for an area they already had a nice chunk of. If they take it, the war will continue. Remember the Germans made it all the way to the outskirts of Moscow (the Germans could see the Kremlin at a distance) but ended up getting pushed all the way back to Berlin.
We always have been. I was in the USSR during the collapse of Marxism (advising the new govt on financial matters) and our guides were furious at the stupidity of the West actually believing what their leaders said. This was a common theme - we assume they are telling the truth and the people presume they are lying.
So no different than our political system, they lie, we believe it because otherwise we are serfs. Funny how we assumed the opposite, I guess the grass IS always greener.
This is basicaly how I feel about naive dummies from "the west" ever since the war started. People are citing the Russian government as if they suddenly started to tell the truth.
If i Have understood correctly In russia there is actually a term For a lie government Tells, no one actually believes but repeats to everyone so they won't cross The daggers with government or its supporters. amazing.
@@afungusamungus2860 The difference is that you can sit and bitch all day at your country and leaders without worrying about spending 15 years in jail or being stopped on the street to have your phone checked.
One thing everyone is ignoring is the incredible experience the Russian military is having on the ground. The last time the US & allies faced a war of this magnitude was the 1970s, in Vietnam.
That experience didn’t mean much most of the guys are either 1) Dead or wounded, or 2) conscripts that are going to put back into their civilian lives once this is over. And that still doesn’t even the account for the corruption issues the Russian military has. I mean shit, there early war performance tells me they still learned jack-shit from Grozny all those years ago.
They are learning a lot of lessons that should have been been learned long ago and should not have been allowed to disapear again by investing in training and excercise.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 they had learned a lesson: never try to do things nicely, in gloves. Was there any technical reason why Russian army didn't use "shock and awe" style operation? Any missiles Ukrainians had trouble intercepting in April, May etc, especially October, November and December, they could be fired in first few days too, smashing military bases, depots, large SAM installations, civilian infrastructure especially key distribution transformers and junctions between power plants and the power grid, not to mention bombing buildings like parliament or central government. No, Russian didn't do that because they wanted to do everything in nice way. "From tomorrow, you have different government, everything else is going as usual". I would say that in case of any potential NATO neighbor like Georgia, they should do exactly that with side note that next wave of missiles will be with tactical weapons. Neutral or sand turned to radioactive glass? Georgians would have very easy choice. After the war ends, be sure that at least _some_ Ukrainians will ask about Zelensky and his politics and why he was so cocky instead "let's try to negotiate, let's have peace". Why would he? He rents his villa to Russian couple because money is universal language.
50s, Korea. Is Russia honestly doing so badly? Russia put up against the second biggest army in Europe which had 300,000 various security forces on the ground ready to go, and they’re conducting most of their fighting from miles deep what if Acacian that works constructed over the course of a decade if not longer. West is used to seeing her advanced professional militaries rollover disorganized tribesman in the matter of days or weeks so that’s become our expectations of how quickly a military operation should go. It was admitted only about three or four months in Ukraine was completely out of their original weapons stocks and the Russians have destroyed their industry so if not for copious foreign aid they would have fallen long ago. Keep in mind within the first two months Ukrainians took so many losses it would have destroyed the standing British army. If anything the fact the Russians are able to advance continuously against such a numerous and well dug in the enemy while scoring six kills to every one loss is absolutely amazing and should instill a very deep fear and respect of the Russians.
@@Mortablunt ukraine also captured more equipment from russia then is present in all european armies combined to replace the stuff they lost in battle. Ukrainian losses are just heavy speculation. The ukrainian army does not release any numbers and the visually confirmed number of losses are pretty low. While russian visually confirmed losses are already around 150k. It is true that these numbers are most likely underestimations as not all casualties are photographed, filmed and or uploaded to the internet. Plus ukrain seems to be more concistent in actually uploading this footage. In reality loses could very well be equal even though the confirmed numbers heavilly favor ukraine. The numbers you are quoting are just random noise comming from russian propaganda and have no value whatsoever. And yes, russia is doing badly. This should have been a rollover in a matter of days or weeks, the advantage russia had was so enormous. How the russians managed to fck this up will be subject of research for many decades to come. At this point the only thing propping up the russian army is it's artillery. Pinning ukraine in place and denying them the ability to manouvre. Once the russian guns stop firing though this war will have run it's course. Probably by summertime we can all look back at this was and ask why it was even nessesary. And with a bit of luck putin will have his own room in the hague.
@@JK-dv3qe The US military is by default more effective than most militaries because they rely on technology and not manpower like Russia does. Drones, aircraft, smart weapons. Russia still relies on old tanks, old artillery, and old fashioned man power. Russia is basically stuck in the past while most western militaries are looking toward the future with technology. Not to mention that Russia doesn't have the economy to support most of these futuristic tactics.
Reminds me of Goebels 3rd Raich propaganda where they were telling how russians are basicaly stupid enimals lead to the fire by their jewish commanders. Somehow these stupid enimals killed the best army of combined europe and found themself in Berlin. Dr. Goebels died but hes job lives on. Moder western propaganda (this channel included) is like a copy/paste of Goebels work. Not suprising tho since many na-zis found refuge in US and Canada after ww2.
@@Lukas-ej9om Says... BBC? :) It js a simple manipation when you say something like: "they will take Kiev in 2 hours!". And when its not gonna happen you be like: "ohhhh, you are so lame!". Its like...wut? Why you made up things while 99,99% of wester folk are jgnorant beyond stupid :)
My dad who was a really intelligent guy, once said to me, if you want to work out the strength of Russia, take the numbers they give you and divide by 4.
Thanks for the interview. Two things from me: 1 - I really appreciated your methodology in looking for information. General analysis does not go as deep as it should. I will give you an example from business. There was a local firm who sold 80% of their product to one company. In analyzing the firm, I listened to the announcements of their customer. The customer reported that it had completed the project that they were using the local firm for. It was pretty easy to see this was going to be a problem for the local firm going forward. I do see lots of Press Release analysis in this war, so thanks! I came to a similar conclusion from a different direction - budget. The announced Russian military budget is about the size of the UKs. But they have so much more to fund, some of which is really antiquated and tough to maintain. I didn't know if the Ukrainians could do much (2014 said they would not), but it was clear that the threat from Russia was exaggerated at a global level. 2 - I know a Military Intelligence Analyst at a Battalion level in the US Army very well. He never gives me specifics or anything actionable. But he did say they were told about the equipment that the top end units of the Russian Military had. That equipment was equivalent of what Western soldiers have. It is pretty clear at this point that this equipment does not reach very far into the units of the Russian Army - poor comms, no NVGs, bad body armor (if at all), bad rations. He assumed, as I think we all did, that this better equipment was in widespread use. Turns out - no.
Budget is the real thing to zero in on. There is simply no way to operate and maintain a force of 1 million on the budget as stated. That doesn't include the acquisition costs for new systems or modernization. It is actually pretty easy to see who is lying about readiness just by looking at the budget.
@@swissarmyknight4306 I like that a lot. There are a lot of Independent Sales Rep positions where they say you can work part time and you can make lots of money. I always laugh and add...yes, just not at the same time.
I’m skeptical that the top-end equipment is the equivalent of what the average Western soldier has. I’m sure the Russian government advertises it as equivalent, and perhaps the prototypes were equivalent, but I doubt the Russians have the high-tech manufacturing capability to match Western weapons that rely on computer systems, and even if they did, most of the money to build them probably got stolen.
22:30 I've heard this before. The crime syndicate in Russia can basically drive up to the military base and threaten the soldiers and make them pay protection money. Imagine that! Criminals driving up to armed soldiers at their own base and threatening them! Thing is the crime syndicates in Russia are basically loyal to the regime. So they belong to some Oligarch who probably is loyal to Putin. The soldiers can't do anything against them, because they are under protection of the ruling class. Rumors have it that Putin wants the military to have low self esteem and keep them down, so they are incompentent and can't try a coup d'etat.... but the incompetence and incapability shows when they go to war, too.
В 90-х такое вероятно могло происхождить, но сейчас любых нарушителей принято расстреливать на месте если, конечно, мы не говорим о военной части в "Сергеевке" и в других частях, расположенных на дальнем востоке, имеющих малый контроль над персоналом и повышенной криминогенной обстановкой.
Overestimating of Russia was in best interest of US and other NATO circles in order to get more funding. In reality, without nukes Russia have against whole NATO equal chance as Ukraine against them.
I remember watching in Syria as Russia attempted to leverage the Admiral Kuznetsov as the center of a western style carrier strike group. They tried and failed, with several reported Mig-29 crash landings on deck, and had to fall back on deploying air strikes from captured air fields. Then they ran out of guided bombs and couldn't reliably strike their intended targets. Then not long after, we watched the Wagner Group unit get stomped by a small force of US Marines that, by all accounts, they greatly outnumbered in both men and equipment - and frankly, what were they thinking? That very well could have sparked a major international incident, but the US and Russia seemingly agreed to brush it under the rug. These events alone pretty well told me at this point that the capabilities of Russia we were being sold on were either drastically overblown or nonexistent. I'm just a regular old guy with some military knowledge and it was pretty obvious to me. Maybe I should have called up these analysts and asked them if they'd seen any Russian youtube footage lately or actually read real news.
I remember on youtube, a Russian special forces soldier, lone survivor who said, the Americans didn't give them a chance. They where wiped out by artillery. All they training they had was checkmated by 155mm artillery
It's really amazing how terrible Russian military capability is, considering how they stomped ISIS to dust in a matter of months, something the US couldn't do in over a decade.
I'm puzzled why anyone would take at face value 'official sources' (particularly political sources), regardless of Russian or Western, when it comes to assessments. Both Western and Russian sources have variously (different) incentives to inflate strengths / abilities, and bury deficiencies / defects. Any assessment needs to have validation from independent, microscopic, and secondary sources, and as Dobrev points out, inputs and outputs have to make sense (ex: aircraft availability vs. "600 pilots" training) at functional and operational levels. We already know that Russia is largely a kleptocracy on the 'Federal' side, so it seems naïve to me to assume kleptocratic and corrupt practices would not still extend to the armed forces since the Cold War.... and we know that (for example) Soviet capability was inflated in various ways (or at least seriously wrong) by Western IC machinery. People simply 'believing' the analyses produced by these 'analysts' without looking at their sources and methods are, well.... they deserve what they get.
Former communist governments aren’t trustworthy but like the USA, if they say it publicly it’s probably true, and they have much tighter control of the financial expenditures to make sure at least most of it is going where it should Communists are pathological liars
Russias official sources are usually just the shit you see on the TV. The west official sources are websites that keep records of stocks for their citizens to see for themselves, along with near-Amazon levels of corporate production/logistics. Id say the most corrupt branch of the US military is the Navy. The army/airforce/marines however are much less "swampy". Not even to dickride, its pretty legit. Of course there are incompetent people, and bad accounting. This very much so is obvious. But when the military starts acting more like a corporation than a military, that's when you know their competency is there. Every fuckup that couldv happened during Iraq or Afghanistan had happen, and was documented to the point it was shown on MARVEL MOVIES.
So a guy wrote in a 2017 article that the Russian military wasn't a threat to Ukraine...completely ignoring the fact that the Russian army booted Ukraine out of Crimea in 2014. Fucking what?
I'm former US Army Spec Ops My father was WW2 Naval Intelligence and OSS. I dont know what western Military analyst's are smoking but You do not want to fight Russians. They do War Big. US lost its heavy armor after the First Gulf war and have been fighting Goat herders for the past 20 yrs. We dont even have Corp strength its down to brigade strength. In Russia, being a engineer working for the Military is a glamour job...Russian technology is way ahead of the US. There was no doubt after the first day of the SMO in Ukraine that the Russians were going to win. They are actually doing a complete change from their regular doctrine. Their 1st Guards division is so powerful it could drive through NATO and be eating croissant's in Paris if it wanted to. US Military's doesn't even practice large scale armor maneuver anymore. Russia has per unit far more massive firepower...their artillery grads smerch thermobaric heavy mortar's are devastating. Right now they aren't even losing men ...they scout out a position draw Ukrainian fire, stop set up massive artillery' destroy everything and inch forward to the next spot. Its patient and very terrifying. Those mercs that came back from Ukraine that served in Iraq and Afghanistan as I did, say they were not prepared for the intensity of the combat getting shot at in the woods by hidden Russian tanks......Its like WW2 eastern front on steroids'.
I love how you're getting dismissed by the other commenters for talking facts. It's not just the USA that has dismantled it's armour either. Germany has something like 100 tanks at a state of readiness appropriate for warfare like the Russians have conducted in Ukraine. Ukraine lost more tanks than that in the first week of escalation.
@@jamesrowlands8971 First off the US State dept pays lots of money for online trolls. Second I am pretty sure the people responding never have been in combat let alone Spec Ops. Time is the deciding factor for it is running out on NATO and the Ukraine army. War isnt so much about equipment its about supply. and Ukraine is running out. When it falls it will be like a domino effect...thats how all armies do. Just Look how we left Afghanistan total chaos ghetto style.
Hey "US Special Forces Operator"; please tell me if the Guards Tank Army is so powerful why isn't it (and the Russian army) at the Polish border after 102 days of fighting? I'll answer it for you; the Russian army is incompetent.
US intelligence is more worried about the risk of offending any big economic deals that might be in the works with belligerents rather than doing a thorough review.
I've been following Ukraine coverage obsessively, and this was by far the most interesting and informative discussion of background information that I've seen. Thank you very much for making this.
You believed Ukrainian propaganda, it's that simple. Remember SUmmer Offensive trailer and Crimea Beach Party cringe campaign? Yeah, CIA fucked up big time this time.
The Ukrainian military had many of the same issues. Both suffer from the same soviet history. This corruption and staff turnover becomes crippling when technical skills are needed, such as in engineering, artillery and armoured units, and on the front line where a core of professional NCOs and troops who trust them is also of great value
@@KingRavenfilms soon enough it'll be an offensive, it already is in some sense (belogorod bombed, explosions across russia) its only matter of time victorious armies of west engage.
Still can't admit he was wrong. Amazing. Funny how he said the Ukrainians have been making advances in the Dunbass for 8 years when there was suppose to be a cease fire there. How'd they do that?
okay he made a mistake but why write strange things like. "Still can't admit he was wrong. Amazing." ? who says he read what you wrote, noticed he made a mistake. You also do not notice that you are writing nonsense right?
I guess now we end up underestimating the Russian military because of fake number shared by the Ukrainian military (the military under massive pressure begging for international help is sharing the correct numbers? 😂)
When some random Bulgarian blogger and part time analysts asses the state and the capability of Russian armed forces, from the open source data, better than the whole western intelligence aparatus with their infinite resources, spies, satellites and analysts. And all that Stanislav done was following the local media and applying some common sense... But it wasn't only the Western intelligence community that failed to see the actual state of the Russian military. Even the independent analysts that were considered the most prominent experts on everything related to the Russian military, also miserably failed at what they do. Here I would include Micheal Kofman who constantly saw Russian military as a 10 foot juggernaut ready to crush the Baltic states and Poland before NATO could muster forces to counter them...
You fail to mention that the Russian Elite (Putin and cronies) failed to see in what shape the army was in. It's divine justice that Putins invasion fails because of corruption and incompetence...
Key word here is "blogger", which already drops a huge shadow on him. Russia uses very small forces in Ukraine like 10% (Ukraine has notable numerical advantage like x3, so what Russia is doing is for history books). Russia has no goal to destroy cities that's why Russia ignores most of the infrustructure as most of these cities will be Russian and population there is mostly Russian. I guess you would be impressed if Russia would use aviation left and right like US usually does (they expected that, that's why they evacuated their embassies, but Russia didn't bait) but that's not the Russian way. Russia's goal is not to capture territory but to destroy Ukrainian army and its military complex. At first they were reluctant as it would mean to eleminate tens if not hundreds of thousands solders who are also basically Russians. Russia was not looking forward to it but have to if those don't surrender.
@@_Epsilon_ no its easy; the Russian army is as noted in the interview corrupt and incompetent. And its obvious when you look at the map and consider this was "planned", 103 days has passed and the fascists has only managed to grab 100km of territory... Russian army consists of thieving and raping Gopniks led by drunkards. The result is a shit show and as you noted will go down in the history books...
I'll add another thing, Ukraine was preparing for it for 8 years, built tons of fortefications with reinforced concrete that hard to crack. Baltic states and Poland have that? Ukrainian ground troops are bigger than any NATO troops aside from US and Turkey and they are not in open field. _10 foot juggernaut ready to crush the Baltic states and Poland before NATO could muster forces to counter them..._ Crush in what sense? Russia can bomb the sh*t out of anyone, it is a matter of political will and goals. Russia doesn't have such goal in Ukraine, because it is Russia that will have to rebuilt everything. If Ukrainian forces hide in residential buildings for example (like they were doing in Mariupol) then it becomes urban war and it is not a quick process. Also most footage we get from there are from DNR and LNR forces and Akhmat guys, not from regular Russian army.
I don't understand why everyone thought Russia had such a fantastic military. Russia has done crap in virtually every war it has been engaged in the last 100 years. I think it is more a case of Western military analysts and defence industry overrating Russia in order to draw more resources to themselves.
@@jackhardy3905 Most of the wars Russia has been a primary belligerent in in the past 100 years have been civil wars or independence wars. They lost a bunch of independence wars after the end of WW1 and won some independence wars (as the Soviet Union) when no one helped the state trying to break free. They also lost to Poland right after it became independent. Then, they spent the interwar years reconquering a bunch of the small states that gained independence. Then, WW2 stuff: They jointly invaded Poland alongside Germany, invaded some tiny Baltic nations, "won" in the Winter War at massive losses considering what they were fighting against, "won" against Germany at absolutely horrific losses, and then won against Japan after China and the US had done all the work. For the rest of the Soviet Union's existence, their wars were about keeping its member states from leaving, until they fought and lost in Afghanistan, which spelled the end of the Soviet Union. Then, Russia split off some regions of Georgia and Moldova, lost to the Chechens, later eventually won against the Chechens, split off another region of Georgia, pretended they didn't invade Crimea while they were invading Crimea, and dropped a bunch of bombs on people in the desert. This is not a very inspiring military history. Most of the conflicts they won were against vastly inferior enemies, they invaded themselves several times (and lost one of them), had embarrassingly poor performance against several that everyone thought they would steamroll, and the one time they were truly tested they suffered horrific losses by comparison.
@@gimmethegepgun Well they lost to Poland because Russia was was exhausted by civill war while Poles received fresh supplies from France UK US did all work ? Russia destroyed Japanese army way before US joined war Khalhin Gol ,Hasan US fought with the navy not ground force
@@jackhardy3905 Still lost to Poland. Also, Khalkhin Gol? lol those battles were tiny compared to what China did. US fought with navy, not ground? Tell that to Okinawa.
If we were wrong about Russia, is was for the same reason we are wrong about ourselves. For that matter, how do we know we are wrong about Russia? Russia has not used the full magnitude of its conventional power against Ukraine. In a conventional war Russia may still have the power to overrun all of Western Europe up to the Rhine. No that they will. Even a restored East Bloc would be a burned and an expense to them, not an asset.
This is a pretty good brief. I must admit though, its pretty clear that the inability of intelligence professionals to get it right is troubling. However to be cautious isn’t a bad thing, as preparing to fight a war against a military that is stronger that it actually is, leaves you with an advantage, assuming the investment decisions in men, materiel and capability are sound and sufficient to meet the expected threat. When i was reading stories about how Russian troops were selling fuel to buy alcohol and food whilst on exercise in Belarus, leading up-to the invasion, i knew this was going to be a debacle. But when the system of government in place in Russia is a kleptocracy, would you expect that this mentality wouldn’t infiltrate from general officers all the way down to privates?
I think forecasting how military forces will actually perform in a war is really difficult with all the variables and outside factors to consider. The Russian military wasn't prepared for the task, I think that is the only thing currently that is clear.
Western intelligence has been rotting for 20 years. Ever since we "sexed up" the intelligence about WMD's in Iraq there has been more and more political interference, control and appointments. It doesn't matter if what you say is true, it matters that your report reflects the ideological bias of the political leadership. The people at ground level can feed in good intel but watch as it moves up the chain and what comes out of the top is the exact polar opposite of reality but perfectly conforms to the political desires of the people in charge. There was huge amounts of intel on Afghanistan, not a single grunt thought the Afghan Army would hold up but we are in a post truth society where pronouns are more important than performance.
@Lawofimprobability In theory their logistics should be better but the corruption killed it. If you watch all the interviews with captured Russians from Kyiv a couple of them stated they were on exercise for 2+ months and were issued all of the shiny toys like NVG's and optics. A few days before the exercises ended the officers stole all the shiny toys to sell them. Then they had a surprise invasion with no gear, fuel, ammo or spares. Had you not noticed the cheap Russian ammo and gear on the US civilian gun market? It's all stolen...
@n1uk The talking heads on tv are chosen because they say what the establishment wants them to say. There is a small group of media friendly "experts" who have zero current experience on the ground. The Ukrainian and Estonian intelligence services have vastly more experience with the Russians and have a far more honest and nuanced view. Intel is supposed to be bottom up but instead it's top down and must follow the party line.
It could be deliberate posturing, "aww we're doomed, help us" to trick the enemy into thinking they got the upper hand. But yeah, I as Ukrainian had no clue our military could stand up to that, even with all the ruz deficiencies. My understanding of our army was formed in 90s-00s which... Yeah, you can probably imagine. The end of USSR, nobody's preparing to fight anyone any time soon anyway... It was abysmal.
People always forget that, in a dictatorship, the job of the military is to look dangerous but have no real teeth. This is because they want their foreign enemies afraid, but don't want the military to be a rival for power, therefore the armed forces are kept intentionally weak whilst portrayed as strong.
Also the money which would have to be spend toward military, were actually spend on expensive yachts for the Russian oligarchs. They probably upgraded one or 2 tanks... and the rest were only "repainted", the actual money went to the corrupt officials.... but the thing is... how these same corrupt officials, thought their army is actually strong.... or they thought the whole world works like that?! It seems Putin doesn't have even one friend at the lower ranks in the military to tell him the truth. Maybe sometimes they should go there, at the normal military, not elite forces, not guard divisions, just regular folks and see how are the things there, because this is the way to see if something is not right. Seeing problems in the army is like seeing a cockroach... if you see 1, there are actually 10 000. If you see one corrupt official... they are actually 10 000...
Putin the WEF Quisling under Schwab has placed all the 'elite' Omon & special forces etc under his own National guard Praetorian guard banner due to him not trusting the wider Russian army command . . for good reason as Putin the global young leader is tasked with a one world govt & no nation states , as in no Russia , Putin nor his cronies have not denied he is WEF yet , as Klaus Schwab boasted he is
@@DrunkbearZ Not for an second do I suppose you are from Putin Russia's quarantined from wider west globalist Gulag net . . supposed what if Putin an Manchurian candidate WEF who likes to kiss young boys bellies infamous & normal in WEF pedo ranks & his husband his gay judo pal turned (!) general overnight . . lots of the non elite mafia clans are gay
Nice analysis, basically that's the conscript army I remember. I served there in 2015, had a story when me and few guys were sent to the construction site for night so that sergeant (middle age fat dude) could make money from it. Wish this sick regime will fall someday so there wouldn't be such a stupid stories anymore...
Can you explain this further? You were sent to a construction site to do work, only for your sergeant to pocket the money that you were supposed to get paid?
I remember reading an interesting opinion somewhere stating that the overestimation of Russian military power was what lead Austria and Germany to escalate arming and mobilising which in turn triggered the French and the Brittish to do the same and it all spiraled into WW1. Seems like we haven't learned all that much.
In defence of Austrian fear of Russia, when the Austrian ambassador threatened to mobilise three army corps against Russia Tsar Alexander III twisted his fork into a knot and threw it down onto the plate of the ambassador proclaiming “that is what I am going to do to your three army corps!” Such an action would obviously make an impression.
So much for experts! And the "professional intelligence" community! Sad that the US intelligence capability has degraded so much - and very dangerous to the world! There should be an independent examination of the failures and not left to the people who failed!.
Stanimir Dobrev is an excellent example of someone who does HUMINT (human intelligence), something Western countries used to be good at -- back in the days of the Cold War. Now? It seems far too much intelligence analysis is based on perusing top level official reports and documentation produced by a potential adversary, including their propaganda, coupled with high tech "national assets", which provide awesome remote sensing capability, but are incapable of sniffing out the detailed reality on the ground. Plus, one has to consider the ideological filter the analysis is put through, and the end goals of the intelligence product. Which is usually to incentivise the procurement of weaponry or to justify the deployment of additional "national assets". Are we looking at an example of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower so eloquently warned against?
Or basically why those of us who use Telegram and actually read what the Russians put out and talk to the Russians see shit coming far in advance that comes a shocking news if it ever even makes it to Western cable months later. One had its incredibly gratifying to finally be vindicated about stuff after months of waiting on the other is incredibly annoying waiting for the talking news heads to admit it and hearing people constantly dismiss it as Russian propaganda.
Why is Russia winning in Ukraine. It gets what it wants in Ukraine. It gets what it wants economically from the West. NATO is not making progress. So NATO is watching(studying) this amazing force work.
Interesting. The weakness of units further East might explain why the Russians re-deployed tired forces in the Kiev area to the Eastern part of Ukraine. They literally didn't have viable reserves anywhere else to do the job.
It was also withdraw or lose those units entirely. They were probably a week or two away from a counteroffensive pushing East from Lviv to cut the supply lines to the units attacking Kyiv from the North. It would have meant the loss of I think 10-20,000 troops, and an utterly humiliating defeat, as opposed to the relatively orderly withdrawal they did manage to execute while Ukraine was still gathering mass for that counteroffensive.
I am thinking to myself that perhaps the idea behind this attack on multiple fronts was for Russia to make supplying the army easier by not all troops relying on a few railway lines in the same area, but instead spread the armies out so they could be easier supplied. And another reason would be to to force the small Ukrainian army to spread out over a large area - an area so large that it would be impossible for it to cover all terrain. And here would opening in Ukrainian line show themselves - and become open for the Russian troops to exploit. I theory I see no flaw in that reasoning. However the terrain in the north favored the defenders. A traitor did not blow up a bridge so large parts of southern Ukraine quickly fell into Russian hands. The south and east did have favorble tank terrain with flat ground and short supply lines. The Russians learned much from earlier mistakes and regrouped what they had to the south and east, and hoped to at least take Donbass as a consolation prize after the overthrow of the entire Ukrainian state had failed.
Russia never wanted to occupy Kiev, it has little interest in occupying Russian minority areas. It went West to destroy Ukraines military infrastructure so that it could then take the east with less casualties, which is what it's currently doing.
@@slayerhuh404 So let me get this straight one of the stated objectives was to oust the "Nazis" out of Ukraine, but upon getting absolutelypillaged, Russia repivots toward the Donbass where it's not even stomping Ukraine with Ukraine retaking Kharkhiv. Yeah no buddy, Russia had big ambitions and unlike the US in Iraq, couldn't materialize them remotely so now it's coping and desiring to break off ethnic Russian territories to prop up its two Neo-Colonies in Donetsk and Luhansk.
I suspect that Putin had counted on more help from Belarus. Belarus may be a stalinist holdout but the help they allowed was pretty much restriced to allow Russia to invade from Belarus territory. Apperantly the war isn't popular in Belarus and I believe that Lukashenko are shrewd enough to distance himself from Putin so he can remain in power if Putin falls. And there are Belarusian citizens that have joined the Ukrainian forces. A bit like how Franco was somehow allowed to keep ruling Spain after WW2 despite being a fascist that had been on friendly terms with Hitler that had helped put him in power.
And Russia is incompetent compared to who exactly? When is the last time any ''Western Powers'' fought a huge white army like the Ukrainians, supplied by NATO? Even the small Serbian force, with no support, proved very difficult for NATO to gang up on. Let's see what Western armies look like when they're not picking on ''developing populations'', for example if they took on Russia. They wouldn't look anywhere near as effective as they did bullying Iraq/LIbya/Afghanis/Viets etc., and there was plenty of incompetence in all these wars. And it's obvious the Russians are also exploiting their own version of ''colonial'' troops, meaning that the standards will be lower than the core Russian stock. The difference is that ''Western'' armies aren't just going to be exploiting their colonial troops in the future, their troops will literally BE foreign populations. Already the US military is unrecognisable from what it looked like in WW2.
For fighting a country which is armed and trained by NATO for 8 years and fully supported by arms shipping, Russia in fact isn't doing bad as it makes slowly but steady progress in the Donbas and Ukrainian forces there are close to get encircled. Ukraine is a country with NATO standards, we can't compare this with Iraq.
Well Iraq also had access to a large well trained and experienced army and their stuff wasnt any worse than what Ukraine has. In fact they were mostly using Soviet Gear themselves. So you can def compare it to Ukraine.
@@karlzuhlke3114 Nope you can't compare them. Ukraine is double in size with hills and many rivers, double population as well. Iraq is a flat dessert. Also 1st Iraq war happened after the fall of Sovietunion and therefore had no one arms shipping. Then the 2nd Iraq war, it even had nothing anymore. Ukraine was the biggest land force in Europe with over 2400 tanks and fully supported by NATO.
First of Ukraine doesnt get fully supported by Nato yes they get some gear far less than Nato could provide. It also doesnt have the biggest landforce in Europe thats Russia. It also doesnt have 2400 tanks it had less than 500 when the war started. Also in case you didnt notice Iraq has big rivers too. And Ukraine on the eastern side of the Dnipier river is mostly flat steppe (the place were Russia currently advanced a mile village per day). During WW2 both blitzted through that territoriy in weeks and Russia is still stuck.
@@karlzuhlke3114 Ukraine gets fully supported by NATO within its possibilities which are limited by own needs and political games. Russia isn't Europe, but Eurasia. Go look on a globe. Your source about tank numbers is wrong, Ukraine had around 2500 tanks before the war. Russia makes steady progress in Donbas and Ukies now even confess they suffer horrible high losses with at least 150 dead per day and 800 wounded. What is rather the bottom line. Donbas was heavily entrenched and fortified for 8 years as they expected a Russian intervention. During WWII this area wasn't entrenched.
of course!!! the initial mobilisation on the Ukraine border, when Russia was saying "they weren't going to invade" was a massive backlog of bad logistics before the battle even started.
Except even if they capture all of Ukraine they will never be as strong as they once were. Europe now knows that Russia is a real threat, and will act accordingly, and the cost of the war and the sanctions will devastate the Russian economy for years. Russia is going to be China's puppet soon enough, and China doesn't need them to be strong.
Re: pre-conflict assistance to Ukraine it is a narrow line to walk. If the US/Europe had announced significant military/military funding aid to Ukraine in late 2021 the Russians could have accelerated their timetable and attacked before it was in place. That is why maintaining sufficient defense/military forces is important. Once an enemy has a significant advantage it is very difficult to catch up because your enemy will see what you are doing and attack first. Admiral Jackie Fisher put it well in the early 1900s when commanding the British Mediterranean Fleet. He was promised significant reinforcements in event of crisis and he said I need them now both so the units are properly trained/can function together and because in a crisis the government won’t want to send them for fear of starting a war. What could the US have done to reinforce the Philippines in 1940 that would have prevented a Japanese attack without triggering said attack before the reinforcements were in place?
WoW! Awesome content and information. I see why his deep dive into local sources can be much more effective that crunching published numbers. Thanks for this excellent interview!
Another thing to add. If you are a Western military commander, you are going to get more money if you point how dangerous your enemy is. Same thing with the 'missile gap'. In the United States, during the Cold War, the missile gap was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with those of the U.S. (a lack of military parity). Even the contradictory CIA figures for the USSR's weaponry, which showed a clear advantage for the US, were far above the actual count. Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it was soon demonstrated that the gap was entirely fictional.
Can we also admit that Ukrainians occurred to be much more resilient and determined that all initially thought? Because, you know, the medal has two sides.
Metaphorically, The Russian Army went for a long drive without packing toilet paper. The soldiers were forced to cut off their undies to wipe, having already dropped their trousers to push one out, but you can only do that once. Then, it is skid marks everyday until you go home. And take the flies with you. Airborne.
The best advice I received in tha Army was to always stir your brew, coffee, with a rough stick. You can not take the risk of a smooth stick, because someone may have wiped their arse with it. Here in Australia, we have a deadly bush, with massive stinging leaves, larger than toilet paper squares, called Gympie Gympie. If you wipe with one of those leaves, you will end up choppered out, Dust off, to hospital. Even after months, idiots who do this would report ongoing severe pain. Some asked for Rectum Transplants. However, knowing many of the idiots I served with, The new Arsehole would probably reject them.
"Pokazukha" and "pripiski" are two important terms to learn before any serious analysis of the Kremlin policies in past or today. Some "values" are so "traditional" that they survive any regime's change. As long as the regime stays authoritarian.
Correct me if I'm wrong. But doesn't those 20% of Ukraine also include the areas that was occupied in 2014? So, a more interesting question would be, how much more territory have Russia taken after the 24th of February?
well i dont know in % but if you dont count crimea and the separatis teritories its fucking little compared to what they lost over all but they lost so much cause kyiv was there main target and only after if failed they focused on the southern territoryes so if you dont count russian losses on kyiv and count only there losses in the south its may be even trade off for russia ?? dont know depends what standards you use by western cultures its a fail by asian cultures its win cause they all ways swarmed whit mass conscripts and sacrificed them to take over land
At the end of the day they control less now than they did months ago. How any could possibly see this as anything other than a major strategic defeat is grasping at straws. Nothing about the Russian plan indicated limited wargoals. Kyiv was the priority and they failed to take it.
From what is said here I am astounded that Russia even managed to move an army to the Ukrainian border at all let alone invade. Edit: lol typed this right before Bernard said the exact same thing.
Your bias is very clear and completely at odds with many experienced, decorated senior Western officers (included specialists in strategy) who do not share your low opinion of the Russian Army.
@@Internetbutthurt yeah, what an obvious bias, it'd be a shame if someone was openly biased. Let's just look at your other comments real quick. Oh, pro-Russian troll looking to instigate flame wars under like every comment.
It isn't that hard to use existing rail networks to move troops into a relatively temperate and well populated area. - the troops from the east probably lived in worse conditions than what they had in the staging areas.
Russia is fighting a force that was trained by NATO Special Forces and are equipped with its weapons that were preparing for Russian invasion for over 8 years with help of U.S, Canada, and Brits.
You can follow Stanimir Dobrev on twitter: twitter.com/delfoo
Correction, I said "Debrov" it should be "Dobrev".
Slavs generally do not want to fight Slavs. This is a major consideration
9:52 on paper it would look fixed - Pontemkinsch villages again
great analysis and interview
@@clintonreisig until they do; wouldn't be the first time.
You probably wont find many Germans wanting to fights Austrians either, on the other hand Prussia and Austria fighting over supremacy is pretty much a good part of our history.
So much for the great German military minds like Guderian and Manstein. The German greats are turning in their graves over the low quality analysis of their for-bearers (General Kulat).
Why are you interviewing a Soros guy?
The truth is simply this. It is far better to overestimate an enemy than to underestimate. If you are going to be surprised it is better to find out the enemy is weaker than you thought.
although overestimating can lead to problems of its own,both are not good.
That is essentialy how you get the money. At least in USA. If Russia launches lets say one new submarine, you as a admiral will make statement how dangerous system is that, and how competent is its crew and then you will ask your politicians for money on 3 new submarines. You will get 2. So you are intentionally hyping the threat. And because intelligence agencies are watching each other they will just reflect their own wrong assumptions and create echo chamber...
That's cool when you get to actual fighting, but if it's an information war, it can cause the would-be allies to avoid supporting you because they don't beleive in your victory and don't want their weaponry to fall into enemy's hands. Which is in fact what happened. It makes me really sad to think that if the fame of Russian army wasn't as overblown, more support would come sooner, and Ukraine could be in a better position right now...
@@TomasLKarlik I also think that at least in the U.S the leadership was worried about another Afghanistan. They could have sent in more equipment before this invasion started but probably remembered what happened in Afghanistan and at least considered the government would collapse and all those weapons would just end up in the hands of Russia.
In the case with Afghanistan the Afghan army had a lot of troops and was well equipped but the leadership structure all the way up to the president collapsed.
That’s why the Americans waited 4 years to finish off the South in the Civil War.
Remember militaries go to great lengths to cover up deficiencies however this is usually aimed at foreign militaries and not at their own government.
Also you should always treat your enemy as credible when you are unsure it's far worse to be under prepared than over
The level of corruption was amazing...
Build a kleptocracy of corrupt oligarchs
Start a war
Find out the lower levels all did the same
Surprised Pikhatchu
@@fuckgoogle2554 That’s the big joke, no? The big boss of a criminal syndicate plans the ultimate heist: to steal an entire country. But the plan falls apart when the big boss discovers that his criminal organization is riddled with . . . . criminals.
But did they go to great lengths to cover up the corruption? Or were the higher echelons just not asking questions because they were getting their skim? If Putin was getting 5 or 10% of the vig, where did he think it came from?
Around 25 minutes Stanimir mentioned "ghost soldiers." Lately I've been reading quite a lot of stuff about the Cosa Nostra and honestly no-show jobs are one of the primary bread winners for those guys. They take the salary but there's no worker. I wonder how many Russian colonels/battalion tactical group commanders just reported wrong numbers in their battalion tactical group numbers and pocketed the difference themselves.
good observation
Add it to the list. It think this video gives a prettu good run down.
ruclips.net/video/i9i47sgi-V4/видео.html
This has been an issue since time immemorial for armies. It's been very common for commanders to do this.
South Vietnam in the 1970's is an example. Shadow soldiers were created by officials pocketing the money but not recruiting. Spoiler: it didn't go well.
Check out the video that Perun recently did on the forms of corruption in Russia
What I saw in this video is completely identical to my own experience during army service. I was a conscript in one of the “elite” motorized infantry division in the western military district. Corruption, low quality the majority of soldiers and vehicles are completely true.
Unfortunately, not only western analysts had a such overestimated view. Before the war and even now numerous simple Russian civilians continue to associate the army with pared which they see on Red Square during Victory Day. However, this is just a show which dramatically far away from the real stuff.
Thanks for interesting video and perfect analyzing
So bad would it be in the med-low priority districts, do you thinkv
Brilliant stuff. Stanimir Dobrev did the military analyst equivalent of forensic accounting. He used lower level open source intel to get a more complete picture of the Russian army.
@@BtappinHD lmao imagine if the us shared a land borded with iraq I mean HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
@@BtappinHD The Second Battle of Fallujah lasted 6 weeks. It pitted 10000 US and 3000 allied troops against 4000 insurgents. Obviously, with Russian-style tactics of leveling cities and murdering civilians, the battle would've been even shorter.
You believe the work of a Soros guy?
@@BtappinHD I find it hard to believe the invasion of Ukraine is anything to boast about. Just look at all the losses Russia has sustained in 100 days. Then again, Russia doesn't care about losses of human life, right?
@@calc1657 Those are american stye tactics, imagine if Russians used those.
Recommendation for you. There is a RUclipsr named Perun who made a recent video called How Corruption Destroys Armies. It is a very detailed and thoughtful analysis that often references the current state of Russian military affairs, yet outlines principles that can be applied to various areas and topics outside of that.
Perun doesnt know anything. Do you even know what his background or expertise is? ZERO. He is just proficient at making a power point preso based on someone else's dubious work.
@@Internetbutthurt true, but it's still a good intro
@@Internetbutthurt so you are saying to completely disregard all of his points? I believe its unwise to completely disregard someone's insight due to not having prior military expertise.
Also, he dubiously studied German and Soviet tactics and strategic outlook in the Eastern Front during World War Two, similar to what Bernard does.
Perun is a joker who like this channel has regurgitated propaganda albeit in long form since the conflict began.
@@Internetbutthurt I think he’s a civilian employee of the Australian Defense Ministry.
For the same reason most financial analysts were surprised by the 2008 financial crisis. The more one knows about a subject, the more facts one can apply confirmation bias to, and thus the better one can twist those facts to fit a preconceived notion. Most analysts and experts have some pet theory or prediction that they want the facts to fit. Most intelligence agencies want to form conclusions that will make their political bosses happy.
Thats one way to put it.
You're are a victim of the very mentioned bias by yourself : )
The 2008 was anticipated. It was just silly willingness of the many to believe that no crisis will happen and that they still can play into "inflate the prices" game. But its limits do exist.
@@worldoftancraft He dident say he was surprised he said many analysts were surprised. Your both in agreement that there are forces that are interested in good news while pretending the bad news isent real.
Just like the climate change conversations.
@@clmBerserker I can agree, I did make a wrong point.
If you over hype the capabilities of a potential enemy, you'll most likely get a nice cash injection into military-defensive complex as a whole and your agency in particular. Win-win. US alphabet agencies have been playing this game for decades during the Cold War.
I seriously did not expect Russia to take over 4 times the casualties america sufferred in Afghanistan and ira combined over 40 years in three months
Not Ira but Iraq
@@anuragpoddar8631 True
It’s Absolutely nuts, I was fully convinced the Russian military was nearly on par with the U.S. in 2022. 2.5 years later and they can’t even take one of poorest countries in Eurasia. Russia is learning, but boy did they shit the bed on this invasion.
@@karkanrey1463Call of duty did a lot of heavy lifting for Russian strength perception in the West 😹
I feel like they treated them as a credible threat because if you don't treat an enemy as credible when they are it's far worse then if you you treat them as credible when they aren't
They are are a credible threat to Non-Near-Peer border states. They don't see facing off with US, much less US+(USplusNATO) as a situation they can realistically attempt to match. (That's why they are so quick to use #AtomicRhetoric🚀
Maybe Red Dawn was somewhat optimistic
COD MW2 was waaaay too optimistic aswell :(
VDV taking the entire east coast in a week :')
Good game tho, regardless of the very wrong estimations
Red Dawn had most of Central America involved.
To get a government contract you have to kick back a sizeable share, so that has to be made up for by cutting corners in what you deliver: we saw examples of how abandoned Pantsir missile transporters, which should have been running on expensive imported Michelin tires, were using cheaper Chinese replacements. Which means that somebody pocketed the difference and hoped that nobody would notice.
In the Summer of 1992 I was a reservist attached to a Forward Artillery Observer unit of a European army's 12-gun battery of 105mm howitzer. After 11 months of training as a signalman i was looking forward to my first live-fire exercise. All went well until a Colonel arrived to view a 'fire for effect' battery shoot. A Captain i had previously respected gave me a Toys'R'Us type walkie talkie and told me to crouch out of sight. A 'random' target was selected...shots hit everything but the designated target... until we adjusted over unencrypted comms. All appeared resolved. That night we fired on a moving hillside spotlight target, this was rehearsed for weeks before... '7 sec. delay...drop 300, west 400'.... The battery was congratulated by the Colonel, $180,000 of ammo was expended, all boxes ticked. BUT we still couldn't do the fundamental task, i.e. send rounds to a target with any efficiency (let alone security). The same army i served in could scrape an under-strength battalion annually to perform UN duties (more box-ticking).
The same thing has happened on a vast scale for the Russians. They can slap about Syrians, Georgians and Chechens with limited capabilities and zero air assets but their large-scale ground game is abysmal. Criminal negligence from the top is being paid for by Russian troops and worse Ukrainian civilians targeted it seems by the acre. Truly tragic.
So your army had a bad performance 30 years ago and that's why russian army has a bad performance now.
"A European Army" is pretty vague in the context of 1992. Western European NATO army or a former Warsaw Pact nation whose government had disintegrated within the previous 24 months? With the latter I would expect some serious teething problems as the entire country realigns to an entirely different political and military system.
@@marsnz1002 I would expect this kind of behaviour in any army, even the best ones.
It is a kind of institution which is excellent for status quo preservation more than actual problem solving.
-transparency : delicate (which, in the worst case, means : no one will ever look over your shoulder)
-culture of authority (which gives a mechanical reluctance to contesting a colleague's wrongdoing : you would hinder their authority. This especially becomes a problem when you yourself know you are not crystal clean)
-dilution of responsibility (this is the hindrance of any administration. Layers of hierarchy brings individuals to not endorsing actual responsibility on problems. It's the most efficient way to keep a system still, ban any risk-taking, and shut down any alerts on real problems.)
Actually, in my european country, we often have to wait until independent reporters or civil agents report a problem (loudly) for the army to take measures.
(And not always. Like, we've got guys with swastiks tattoed on the torso, and our headquarters say "nah, this is fine") (but for training, for example implementation of airsoft replicas instead of blank weapons, it was independant civil persons who provoked the army to move and do something.)
@@marsnz1002 "Alan Burke" is an amazingly British name. It's possible it was the British Army (went to Bosnia for "UN boxticking") but I doubt his inference about capability given that it walked across the Falklands to slap the Argentines and also spent two decades patrolling Northern Ireland. You don't do that without massive casualties if you don't know what you're doing.
The alternative is he's Irish and he's bitching about the military capabilities of a neutral nation the size of New Zealand and in danger of being invaded by literally no-one.
Sounds like the Irish army which is unfortunate to hear as I'm looking to join the reserves artillery soon.
I think we can all agree, we would prefer to overestimate our enemy than to underestimate them.
Up to a point. If you overestimate the enemy too much, you’ll surrender without fighting. It’s happened before. You’d be amazed at some of the bluffs that historical commanders have pulled.
They so overestimated the enemy that they advised Ukraine to simply surrender instead of supplying the essential weapons systems.
It is nice to get an analysis from some one who is not trying to sell a product or service OR get a budget increase for his agency. Well done.
You have been misled. Dobrev is 100% selling you a product. He's a Soros employee.
The price is that he bases his analysis on anecdotal evidence. Not very credible, but certainly interesting.
@@Shelmerdine745 everything Dobrev says is paid propaganda. He works for an institution that's specifically designed for that purpose.
Well... If he actually has the newspaper articles that the alleged 'help wanted' ads were in, his arguments would be solid. It really depends if his opinions and accusations are backed by evidence.
I wish you could add unbiased here,but alas...
One thing hasn't changed: they don't care about their own losses.............grunts are still nothing but canon fodder.
As the old saying goes:
*No army survives contact with corruption*
Can they feed their army I thought the old saying was an army rides on its stomach
Napoleon actually said _"No plan survives first contact with the enemy"._
US army begs to differ lol
@@joestendel1111 a lot of units in the US army have the exact same issues ol boy mentioned...
@@ryankolbe365 yes… but they have not created ghost soldiers or stolen training funds yet. Most of the corruption is limited to kick backs
The Russian military loop.
1. Russian military obviously poorly equipped with no training, poor leadership, outdated tactics, no maintainance, etc.
2. Russia shows off new high tech shit to prove it's actually strong.
3. West skeptical, says Russian shit is useless.
4. Russian shit shown not to be useless. West panics. Forgets Russia isn't strong.
5. Russia forgets it isn't actually strong. Invades Japan/Finland/Ukraine, throws outdated, unmaintained equipment with everything that isn't bolted down scavenged by the troops for survival, and uncoordinated human waves of troops at wall, then puts their officers against the wall when it doesn't work.
6. Repeat. (optionally the disgruntled soldiers help someone overthrow the government).
Ah yes, the Lazerpig Loop.
6. Germany invades Russia(50% chance of success).
Nice fantasy you got there, but, no.
Russia does not lack training, nor leadership skills. Russia is fighting a numerically superior enemy and has won every single major battle it has fought in the Ukraine (with exception of some smaller, less important battles). Mariupol was defended by at least 8,100 troops many of whom were elite, battlehardened troops who had years of preperation yet lost big-time to Russian and DPR forces. The Ukrainians managed to so easily lose a very important bridgehead in the Donbass (Izyum) in spite of having enormous terrain advantage and failed in every single one of their attempts to retake the area. Losing the town of Liman in a few hours and allowing their front to collapse in Popasna shows that the RAF is far from what they are portrayed in the media.
Russia does not throw human waves of troops (and neither did they do that in WW2, for the most part). This is an unsubstantiated allegation promulgated by Western liars and older uneducated folk. In fact, Russia is making slow gains not because of Ukrainian so-called ''resistance,'' but because Russia wants to reduce unnecessary casualties on their side. A minimum of 400,000 shells are fired by the Russians per day - it is clear that they want to soften the Ukrainians up a bit before advancing, and when they advance, they advance very fast, as we have seen in Popasna.
That's not how they do it though. Russia has been slow because they've been doing the exact opposite of human waves but instead waves of artillery and rocket batteries.
This war has been a mechanized and industrial war, not that WW2 Soviet bullshit your speaking off lol
@@fegelfly7877 'has won every single major battle it has fought in the Ukraine (with exception of some smaller, less important battles)'
like the really -big- small battle for Kyiv or the really -big- small battle for Kharkiv, a city only 40km from the border that they couldn't even encircle
That was a remarkably insightful interview, thank you for bringing us this information. I think a lot of us in the west had misconceptions about Russia due to previous history that colored how we perceive Russia in the present. This just goes to the wisdom of being willing to accept propaganda for the smoke screen it is and look for low-level, harder to control sources when you are searching for the truth.
Same here -- the idea that any army could be so corrupt was beyond my imagination. If I had read, a year ago, that army professionals were stealing shoes from conscripts, or that officers were embezzling and misreporting so much, I'd have wondered what was wrong with the analyst, not the Russian army. But throw in three months of obvious ineptitude in the field, a level of incompetence and lack of proficiency which boggles my mind, and now I am a believer. I can understand why professional analysts were unwilling to stick their necks out -- they probably didn't believe it themselves!
Need to keep up those defense contracts so homegrown propaganda is also a part of it.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 Well i knew that things like this happened but i thought that it only happened in the units for the third line not everywhere. On the other side as far as i know many of the russian soldiers in the Ukraine come from the more rural regions of the russian federation.
”I think a lot of us in the west had misconceptions about Russia due to previous history that colored how we perceive Russia in the present”
But shouldn't that result in the west underestimating the russians instead of overestimating them? After all russian history is full of military failure.
@@Talashaoriginal ”On the other side as far as i know many of the russian soldiers in the Ukraine come from the more rural regions of the russian federation.”
Russia has used most of their elites units and in fact is the western military district who has underperformed the most.
I'm just watching the Russian military advance, and the Ukrainian army crumble. And wonder where any of this discussion is still relevant 4 days later. Apart from being pure projection, that is. It is now obvious that the average Ukrainian conscripted soldier on the front line does not get the weapons given by the West. It is also obvious that the Russians are advancing , not going backwards, and that their morale seems high. Which is normal for an army that is if not welcome, at least appreciated by the local population.
Where are you seeing that?
And what's taking soooooooo long??
@@rogerthat4545 They are now retreating or have retreated in the last 48 hours from Sieverodonest, Yarova, Tetyanivka, Svyatohirsk, Bairak, Peremoha and Shestakove, among others. There are many channels giving daily accounts of the fighting, which use boith Russian and Ukrainian sources. "Military Summary" and "Defense Politics Asia" being two of the most popular channels. The Ukrainian army started digging trenches and building bunkers 8 years ago, and the Russian, LPR and DPR forces are first obliterating them with massive artillery fire before advancing. This limits their losses quite a bit. It's not that slow, but it's got to be slower than when the US army drone bombs Afghanis riding donkeys, which is the type of fighting Western armies are used to these days.
@@rogerthat4545 Oh. And Patrick Lancaster has interviewed many residents of Mariupol and other cities. All Russian-speaking residents are quite happy with being liberated by the Russian forces, and that's about 90% of the total population of the Donbass and Eastern Ukraine. Check his YT channel, then decide for yourself.
@@tikabass looks to me like it's been going back and forth for quite some time.. I got to ask, what's taking the invading slave "army" soooooo long?
@@tikabass "Patrick Lancaster"?
Let me guess, he has very convincing videos of people dressed in civilian clothes saying that Ukraine is attacking them, but offers no actual evidence?
Can you explain how they can tell the difference between Russian and Ukrainian artillery?
But yet the US couldn’t even beat rice farmers and goat herders 😂😂😂😂
reading the local weeklies to secure vital strategic secrets out of closed socities is nothing new : in WWII , clever intelligence individuals who kew German culture intimately realized there was a strong local tradition to publicly mark the death of all military carerrists. Situated in Switzerland they got german small town weeklies, did a statistical analysis and realized the huge constant death toll on the eastern front even in late 1941……
The original book "Megatrends" described how the Western Allies had large departments that measured publication inches in Axis newspapers to conduct trends analysis. How much Nazi newsprint was being devoted to agriculture each month ? What about stories on the Chinese War in Imperial Japanese newspapers? What about rationing of newspaper and ink?
The gov & military have a vested interest in over hyping other military’s … to justify ever bigger Budgets…..follow the $$$$
LMAO Russia is still winning and the NATOadies are still coping.
The best analysis I have seen. Instead of just grabbing the low hanging fruit, and accepting it as fact, the techniques used to check on the "official facts" was very well done and very comprehensive. Thank you both for your work.
Several military officers I talk to on occasion were dumbfounded by how badly the Russians did. There was a real sense of "I've spent years training to fight these jokers?" From them.
I understand, but the reason those Western officers are so much better than the Russians is BECAUSE they train for years.
It's telling that the military officers you spoke to also are falling for the propaganda.
Surprises also happen the other way around.
I served with ex NVA (East Germany) officers. And they told me how shocked they were, realising that they sacrificed their life to fight the expected nato attack only to find out that those plans never existed after they had access to the nato data.
@@sebastianriemer1777, this is typical for totalitarian regimes - pumping up their population with defensive war rethroric, everyone around is an enemy and wants to destroy our precious state. And every war they begin is explained by "the enemy wanted to attack us first!". This is same for Hitler, for and it's the same for Putin in 2008 and 2022. This is exactly the kind of bullshit you can make millions people believe when they live in isolation (even partial), and the state controls the media.
Western armies have fought guys in sandals.... Russia would destroy US in urban warfare like they are destroying the Nazi fucks in the Ukreich
I mean they're making ground now, against entrenched enemies. They've also learned from their mistakes early in the war and have upped air sorties from 200, in March, to 300 in May. They may not be steamrolling Ukraine, but they are beating them.
True. Everyone doesn't understand this for some reason
shhh don't ruin the narrative, ukraine will be in moscow within two more weeks trust the youtube generals
Not to mention that the whole world is supporting Ukrain rn both financially and militarily with weapons. People tend to forget that Ukrain is not fighting against Russia alone.
@@yajamanvamsikrishna509 People also underestimate how big Ukraine is. They've already taken land the size of the Benelux countries, with only 200k troops. All things considering they're doing very well.
@@kipcsaknorris2776 Very true. The war would've already been over if the West didn't send tens of billions of dollars in free aid.
Defensive wars generally require less training and professionalism, as the fighters are highly focused as they are defending their homeland. But offensive wars on another country's soil require extreme degrees of professionalism and training, like the Germans had in the early 40's.
Like the US military today. That most countries now sucks at conducting invasions is a GOOD thing.
This is why russia is generally shit when it invades outside russia but decent on home soil
🟡🟡Why thugs are upside down in America??
Not long ago recessions seemed to strike America roughly
once a decade. But only two years after the first lockdowns,
the business cycle is turning at a sickening speed and another
one already seems to be on its way. If you are like most people,
your memory of downturns will be dominated by the past two-
the financial heart attack in 200709 and the pandemicinduced
collapse in 2020. Both were severe and highly unusual. By their
standards, America’s next recession will almost certainly be milder and more pedestrian. But because the world economy, asset
markets and America’s politics are all fragile, it may yet have
nasty and unpredictable consequences
@@PozorUkraine bot smh
@@Ukraineaissance2014 russia literally drove the germans all the way back to berlin. I dont think you know what you are on about.
I'd rather we over-estimated the enemy and then be pleasantly surprised than the opposite
I honestly didn't think Putin was going to invade. One reason was that I saw reports on the appalling conditions the troops on the "exercise" were living under, sleeping like sardines in unheated rooms, etc.
But the main reason was that I had looked up the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces. Which was about the same size in active personal as the russian forces in theatre.
I simply couldn't imagine that anyone would be dumb enough to try a major assault against a trained, experienced and reasonably well equipped regular army that was both prepared and had the advantage of defence without a massive numerical advantage.
I figured there was no way Putin would be dumb enough to try such an assault without AT LEAST a two-one advantage (I would personally have wanted more, but I figured that 600k troops would be way, way out of Russia's ability to concentrate).
Guess if I was surprised on the 24th...
Main advantage Russia has was in armoured units and Air Force , thier armoured advantage was neutralised by ATGMs in urban areas and their Air Force ran out of stand-off ammunitions and vulnerable to MANPAD while dropping dumb bombs.
Yeah, this operation will be studied by military experts, because Ukraine has 3x numerical advantage and is on defensive, but Russia is still pushing them back.
@@alexsilent5603 You're delusional if you think Ukraine has 3x the numerical advantage.
@@g1y3 Yea, I knew about those advantages. But I figured that defensive warfare, especially defensive urban warfare hasn't really changed. Fundamentally it still always comes down to the boots and blood.
@@Daneclaw he's counting every civillian that could potentially turn into armed militia
The numbers check out when you consider that the Russian army is fighting the entire able population of Ukraine
Big thank you to Stanimir Dobrev. This is very enlightening. Also thank you Bernard for tackling Russian military corruption. This and Perun's video about it, show the need for militaries to be better funded, more training and more professionalism.
I hope my country the Philippines is actually paying attention to all this, because it still has quite alot of problems.
My former battalion commander in Kosovo, 1999, Danish forces, was found guilty in nepotism, a few years ago. So it goes on here too.
Corruption and nepotism will always be part of the military but it should be a exception and not part of the system.
You can also look at economy data of some countries. Some numbers can be tuned with kind of legal matters, but in some economic crisis of the past, there were doubts on chinese numbers especially. The idea was, that district and regional officials were reporting beautified numbers. Some people looked at electrical power generated or used coal and other basic numbers for a better picture of the situation
>I hope my country the Philippines is actually paying attention to all this, because it still has quite alot of problems.
bro we both know BBM is gonna sell the country to China anyway
@@captainautism8221I just hoping that won't happen. Duterte tried to change/modify Philippine foreign policy and alliances but failed spectacularly.
I hope that BBM gets the same treatment.
This is perhaps the most insightful interview I've seen on the topic.
This is perhaps the least insightful interveiw I've seen on the topic, because it is the only interview on the topic I have seen.
@@GrimgoreIronhide In which case it's also the most insightful, you absolute goon.
It is my opinion that the initial stages of the invasion, were Russia’s attempt to take Ukraine in a “western style” when that failed they resorted back to heavy artillery bombardment, capturing ruins etc.
Lol western style for me it's bombed to pebbles Yugoslavia, Libya separated back into tribes and Vietnam where's no place without traces of the bombing
Have you seen east Ukraine?? Its lile looking at ww2 pictures everything is bombed to rubble
I agree aswell. The whole western style of invasion didn't work out well for Russia. Which makes sense since the west had a century to build up that style. Russia had 10 years at best.
this was exactly like the old Missile Gap where the US looked at what russia was doing, where it was, and extrapolated and then it turned out it had plateaued instead of increased its efforts
The "missile gap" was known to be nonsense though. Kennedy just pushed it during his election campaign for political reasons
The missile gap was always in US favour & the military industrial complex promoted the lie of soviet superiority to gain support for even more of an imbalance hidden
When my grandfather served in the Soviet army, he did everything from messhall mass fights, to jumping out windows to get away from knife armed armenian gang, catching lobsters because theres no good food while he was naked from lack of clothes with an ak around his neck so no one would dare mock him, being forgotten in a swamp in Belaruss and wintering in a village with the locals after 2 of his 4 men almost died of freezing to death, to allying with a georgian for protection by the georgian gang, ....
When my cousin served in modern Latvijas army, his worst complain was how stressful taking the practical exams where because all the superiors are watching.
My family are very much highborn nobleman, but in the soviet army you just do what you have to do.
Seems the Russijan army hasnt improoved the soviet army inherited, while Latvija build a new one from 0 with NATO help and is much much better off.
Modern Latvian army is rather small and professional, no wonder the difference. I hope it's capable enough to stall the Russians long enough for me to escape Riga before they shoot me in the head Bucha-style :-(
@baileyboy73 baileyboy73 gotta have some if you are a "traitor to the motherland" on the run.
@@stariyczedun Size and profesionalism doesnt matter, its the honor of the people that does.
Also run how? If Russija has the strength to take Rīga it has the strength to close to Suvalki gap. If you want to run you should do so long before the war starts.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 staff your army with a socioeconomic equivalent of maskačkas čigāni and pay them 200 eur per month - I doubt much honour would be left. Good point about running though. I hope I will be able to drive my skoda to Kurzeme and hop on the last ferry to old Europe. Somehow. Alternatively Latvian forests can provide hiding for many years even under total occupation.
Nobleman, sure ...😂😂😂😂😂 you fool
Unironically the thing that completely broke any delusion(of which I had little to begin with) of the Russian army's competence was a video by a Russian RUclipsr called NFKRZ on Russian obligatory military service. He goes into some detail about the degree to which obligatory service sucks, just how far draft dodging goes and how generally terrible the entire deal is.
After that talking to Russians from time to time, especially about their experience(and noting that almost all of them had none despite officially being far past the age that they should've served) clued me in a lot.
That is a general issue with conscripted armies and most likely why we dont depend on them in the west
@@jnnfccc1794
Yes and no, plenty of countries have had and still have a fairly high quality conscript service(see: Israel).
Obviously those conscripts barely compare to their professional counterparts in any way but it's clearly possible to execute well enough.
Yet Russia's military fails not only in it's conscripts, but it's regular army is also a complete shambles.
Also...there's deeper political reasons why the West has largely gone away from conscripts - Vietnam is a big reason.
After Vietnam a lot of countries started only deploying professional troops abroad if not wholly shifting to professional armies.
Put simply, people are a lot less sensitive to military interventions with professional armies.
I saw that video; that video was the reason I thought Russia would never invade Ukraine, because their army clearly sucked and wouldn't perform well. I was wrong about the invasion, but correct in my reasoning.
@@The_Crimson_Fucker I mean Israel's conscripts represent how much of the global conscript population by %? Does it even hit 1% after Russia, China and both Koreas are taken into account? There is an exception to every rule. Also technology plays a major role in the move away from conscripts as you need a focused professional for very specific combat roles. Conscripts basically produce a rifleman with no frills, they really cant be used for anything more advanced considering their service spans 2 years max, usually one, and again with some sliver sized country somewhere with an exception.
@@jnnfccc1794
China doesn't tend to use Conscription, they don't need to.
South Korea's conscripts tend to be of a higher quality and lower rates of abuse, there's also Switzerland and Norway - Switzerland like Israel represents relatively high quality conscripts. Now all these countries use their conscripts in a variety of roles and one of the most popular uses for conscripts in regards to regular service seems to be rear echelon personnel, regular patrols(see: Israel) and security.
On the flip side, North Korea's entire army is conscripts only - they don't have "professionals" as per se - and so on.
Experts don't know what they're talking about. They didn't realize that Ukraine was the most capable army in Europe and that was what Russia was fighting. They have been preparing for this for almost a decade. Not a single Western power have faced such enemy since Vietnam, where the US lost. They were wrong at the start, and still wrong today. They either overestimate or underestimate Russia.
Blinded by hate of Russia.
What a cartoon,, Laverov stated in reference to their naked aggression in Ukraine "Russia is not ashamed of showing the world what we are." They should be ashamed, seeing what a extremely bad show of their performance. Hahaha.
Yet another great piece of coverage, where Military History not Visualized measures much better than what I see in the news, when I do have a look at my TV.
Well done, and Stanimir Dobrev should be invited back.
I will have to rewatch this episode, as it has so many details, that I might have missed too many.
All Stanimir does is reprodusing rumors :) It was also funny to see how russians were doin poorly in conflict with geargians. I mean, they knocked out Geargia in six days. And yet everyone tells how cool us army is wich basically lost all its wars lol
It's true - the 2017 Russian military wasn't the poorly equipped and uncoordinated force that invaded Georgia in 2008. It's an entirely new poorly equipped and uncoordinated force!
Ahh ges yhats why rhey are soo good at adopting to their enviroment, quicly changing fighing style and so on.
The people who said Russia's military is a paper tiger were laughed at for years
Rob Lee's assessment was spot on. The Russian southern districts have been by far the most successful, though eventually stopped after capturing Mariupol, Melitopol, and Kherson.
The other's assessment was less correct though.
half of the reason Kherson was so successful is because it was perhaps the only city where FSB actually managed to get a foothold before the war broke out.
@@iannordin5250 I thought that the military commander for Kherson refused to fight. I'm not clear whether he went to Russia or just left Ukraine, maybe neither. I recall Zelensky saying there had been traitors that capitulated in Kherson without fighting. Someone got arrested, and that's all I recall about it.
@@cliffc2546 Basically, the man in charge of the defenses actively sabotaged the entire defense including de-mining roads, dismantling the units stationed there, and closing volunteer recruitment. The Kherson defense forces also refused to blow up the bridges that would have greatly slowed the southern advance and nearly make the place untouchable from the Russian advance.
They’ve not stopped though. You’re living in a fantasy land.
@@randomclick2826Yes they have. Most of the advancements and villages that Russia has made in the last 2 weeks have been pushed back in the last 3 days. With every village they capture they lose another.
The US and western militaries in general greatly publicize their defficiencies and faults.
They do this, because its an excuse to ramp up military spending, and for promotions/work.
If the airforce concludes it needs this edge over the russians and says how weak and outliens their defficiencies, congress gives them the moeny and support, and they fix it quickly enough.
Especially after Vietnam, the US military basically adopted that entire rhetoric of basically never underestimating their enemy, and to a large extent, overestimating them.
Russia on the other hand just wants to act strong, and thats it.
Speaking of Airforce.
Russia needs to remember that the CIA has almost the same size Airforce as the USA Airforce has and CIA Airforce did over 80% of all Iraq and Afghanistan sorties,go look it up.
Good luck Putin if you think that you're Airforce is the strongest.
That's why having a paranoid MoD is beneficial. By grossly overestimating you're enemies, you'll basically win most of the time, however COIN is where most countries fail, especially if the insurgents you're fighting is fanatical and has better knowledge of the terrain.
Why were we so wrong about Russia?
Because "Never underestimate a threat"?
Also they looked at least somewhat competent in Syria and Crimea. Furthermore they won in Georgia though that was a shitshow militarily speaking for Russia. Taking ukraine is a different level entirely; instead of a few divisions fighting sporadically, it's the entire ground forces fighting essentially continually with a near peer rival.
@@TheFirebird123456 Also, in previous conflicts they were fighting against armies that they trained and therefore knew how to beat. But in Ukraine, they’re fighting an army that was trained by the West and is using inherently superior tactics that have largely negated the Russian advantage in quantity of equipment and air power and missiles. Russia doesn’t know how to beat these tactics except to try to overwhelm them with numbers, and they can’t change their doctrine because it is inextricably linked with their system of government.
@@bluemarlin8138 i am lost is Ukraine winning the war
If Ukraine has 700,00 troops and Russia has 200 to 300,00 troops then Russia is doing a pretty good job pounding it with artillery.
Yeah, despite the support Ukraine is receiving from NATO, people of Russia are STILL able to fight them effectively.
Most people are blinded by propaganda saying one side is currently dominating the other... (It's most noticeable with Pro-Ukraine propaganda)
However, what is actually happening is that the armies are currently evenly matched despite the supply difference.
The front is 1000 kilometers long and the west INSISTS Ukraine not invade Russia…. Allowing Russia to fuck around and concentrate forces…
Moscow, and the West, believed their own hype. Equipment is only as good as the soldiers using it, the logistics supporting it, and the command and control network directing it.
There hasn't been a single, successful, Ukrainian counterattack in over 100 days of warfare.
@@jamesrowlands8971 Really? I've seen several so far. On every front, Kyiv, Kharkov, Severdonesk, Kherson all have seen successful Ukrainian counterattacks. Admittedly they are limited local attacks, but they have been successful and more counterattacks are coming.
@@charlesharris9965 and they all have been successfully repulsed with many ukrainian casualties.
@@lexburen5932 and many ruzzian casualties as well
@@charlesharris9965 imagine 200k army overcome 600k or mb million already? in OFFENSIVE, ure suffers some heavy form of shizophrenia
I had some quite big doubts about Russian military capabilities. It seemed like every month we used to get a new video of a boondongle. A helicopter crashing at a display, a surface air missile performing somersaults, Kuznetsov deciding to catch fire again.
That said I didn't think it would play out like this. I could only ever see Ukrainian getting crushed over a few months due to being completely over matched by Russia. I didn't expect Ukraine to perform well tactically.
I agree. I knew that the Russian army still relied on much Soviet junk because it lacked funds to replace all Soviet tanks, artillery, steel helmets and provide everyone with body armor. I also knew that the Russian military doctrine sucks and is the opposite of auftragstaktik. I did also knew that Russia lacked funds and high technology to keep competing with the western world in top notch high quality weapons... and that T14 Armata and SU57 was both overly hyped in their capapbilities, and they were too expensive for poor Russia to mass produce, and that they would likely be delayed and perhaps not be produced at all.
The tolerance of heavy losses might be a strength of the Russian army compared to the west. But otherwise I have been fundamentally unimpressed by the Russian forces.
But even I did not expect them to perform as bad as they did. Poor maintance, corruption, overheard communcation, poor morale etc were factors I was unaware of on how bad there were before the war.
Anyone would have seen the writing on the wall during the Kursk disaster and the asinine rescue attempts by Russia.
nato support and satellite intelligence
@@allewis4008 Well, sinking of Kursk is 22 years ago, basically when Jeltsin was just of his office. So, in hindsight it looks like those problems are only hushed away, and organization is still just as inept. But that is only with the experience's in 2022 combined with what happened in August 2000.
Well,the latest update , ukrainian just push Russian out from severedonetsk. For honest i think they cant do it. But again,they are prepare the war since 8 years ago.
What a good news for Ukraine.
Better to overestimate than underestimate a possible foe. Especially when your armed forces funding has to be sourced from an elected body with the majority not being soldiers prior to their new responsibilities.
Too much optimism is dangerous. Too much pessimism is dangerous too. One should always try to be a realist.
It is of course easier said than done.
Too much optimism can make you take stupid risks and walk into ambushes and have no plan B for escaping because you was too overconfident in your own ability and underestmated your foe. But if you overestmate your foe all the time, then he can psychologically blackmail your country into concessions despite your military is stronger. And in a war you might be paralyzed and too afraid to take risks despite there is a high chance of success and your attacks are very likely to pay off very well, and quickly bring the war to an end for you with a small price for you and a high price for the enemy.
So one should try to never over or underestimate an enemy.
A realistic view is the best. Then you can avoid stupid overly aggressive mistakes, and you can still sometimes play very aggressive when it pays off.
Yes, MT. No General ever complained about an excess of Victory.
@@nattygsbord exactly.
"Better safe than sorry" doesn't always work in war. It can often lead to being sorry in another way.
The point I was trying to make was in regards to funding of forces, that better the funding and R&D be provided to fight a near peer adversary and achieve overkill to reduce friendly casualties as opposed to an underestimation and the extra blood to be spilled from this result.
@@MT-fh1pw
Economics and military strategy focus on the best handling of limited resources.
Spending enormous amounts of money on one weapon system to achieve overkill, means that you got less money over to spend on other types of weapons.
I don't think that would be an effiecent handling of resources, and it would probably create more human losses.
Maybe Tiger II was not the best tank for Germany, despite its extra big 88mm gun made both the gun on the Tiger I and panther look weak. And despite its well sloped thick frontal armor was twice as thick as needed.
The Germans did achieve an overkill.
But they could never build many of this tank. It would have been better if they had upscaled production of their other tanks instead like the panther.
Israel could upgrade their Merkava tanks if they wanted to. Then they could achieve overkill with mounting a 15cm gun on their tank. But it would be pointless to fire a mini nuke on an old Soviet garbage tank that its neighbouring countries use.
15cm ammo is more expensive than the 12cm. It takes more time to reload. You can carry fewer rounds of ammunition inside a tank etc.
So I don't think upgrading the gun on Merkava is the most pressing need of Israels army. It might do other better things with its military budget... spending it on the airforce, or on the infantry or whatever..
"Why we continue to be wrong about Russia", there I changed it for you.
The hubris some are displaying is incredible. You miss the forest for the trees while Russia grabs the Ukrainian east.
You should look into Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok article from January 2022 entitled 'Mass Fire attack on Ukraine', where he covered a lot of the likely issues the Russians would face and how the military and government in Russia was massively misjudging the situation and were very overconfident. He mentions foreign volunteers and various other factors.
A very interesting article.
Just read it. Excellent article. Too bad everyone, including the Russian leaders, ignored it.
I read it, it is an excellent article. He very accurately predicted the troubles that the Russian army would face in this conflict.
@@MPdude237 they seem to be doing ok in donbass, just ask Ukraine.
@@nagantm441 Bleeding a lot for an area they already had a nice chunk of. If they take it, the war will continue.
Remember the Germans made it all the way to the outskirts of Moscow (the Germans could see the Kremlin at a distance) but ended up getting pushed all the way back to Berlin.
So it's now 3 weeks later.
Is the Russian army still so terrible now that Ukraine have lost so much ground?
We always have been. I was in the USSR during the collapse of Marxism (advising the new govt on financial matters) and our guides were furious at the stupidity of the West actually believing what their leaders said. This was a common theme - we assume they are telling the truth and the people presume they are lying.
So no different than our political system, they lie, we believe it because otherwise we are serfs. Funny how we assumed the opposite, I guess the grass IS always greener.
This is basicaly how I feel about naive dummies from "the west" ever since the war started. People are citing the Russian government as if they suddenly started to tell the truth.
so shock therapy?
If i Have understood correctly In russia there is actually a term For a lie government Tells, no one actually believes but repeats to everyone so they won't cross The daggers with government or its supporters. amazing.
@@afungusamungus2860 The difference is that you can sit and bitch all day at your country and leaders without worrying about spending 15 years in jail or being stopped on the street to have your phone checked.
Well, this didn't age very well.
One thing everyone is ignoring is the incredible experience the Russian military is having on the ground. The last time the US & allies faced a war of this magnitude was the 1970s, in Vietnam.
That experience didn’t mean much most of the guys are either 1) Dead or wounded, or 2) conscripts that are going to put back into their civilian lives once this is over.
And that still doesn’t even the account for the corruption issues the Russian military has.
I mean shit, there early war performance tells me they still learned jack-shit from Grozny all those years ago.
They are learning a lot of lessons that should have been been learned long ago and should not have been allowed to disapear again by investing in training and excercise.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 they had learned a lesson: never try to do things nicely, in gloves. Was there any technical reason why Russian army didn't use "shock and awe" style operation? Any missiles Ukrainians had trouble intercepting in April, May etc, especially October, November and December, they could be fired in first few days too, smashing military bases, depots, large SAM installations, civilian infrastructure especially key distribution transformers and junctions between power plants and the power grid, not to mention bombing buildings like parliament or central government. No, Russian didn't do that because they wanted to do everything in nice way. "From tomorrow, you have different government, everything else is going as usual".
I would say that in case of any potential NATO neighbor like Georgia, they should do exactly that with side note that next wave of missiles will be with tactical weapons. Neutral or sand turned to radioactive glass? Georgians would have very easy choice.
After the war ends, be sure that at least _some_ Ukrainians will ask about Zelensky and his politics and why he was so cocky instead "let's try to negotiate, let's have peace". Why would he? He rents his villa to Russian couple because money is universal language.
50s, Korea.
Is Russia honestly doing so badly? Russia put up against the second biggest army in Europe which had 300,000 various security forces on the ground ready to go, and they’re conducting most of their fighting from miles deep what if Acacian that works constructed over the course of a decade if not longer.
West is used to seeing her advanced professional militaries rollover disorganized tribesman in the matter of days or weeks so that’s become our expectations of how quickly a military operation should go.
It was admitted only about three or four months in Ukraine was completely out of their original weapons stocks and the Russians have destroyed their industry so if not for copious foreign aid they would have fallen long ago.
Keep in mind within the first two months Ukrainians took so many losses it would have destroyed the standing British army.
If anything the fact the Russians are able to advance continuously against such a numerous and well dug in the enemy while scoring six kills to every one loss is absolutely amazing and should instill a very deep fear and respect of the Russians.
@@Mortablunt ukraine also captured more equipment from russia then is present in all european armies combined to replace the stuff they lost in battle.
Ukrainian losses are just heavy speculation. The ukrainian army does not release any numbers and the visually confirmed number of losses are pretty low. While russian visually confirmed losses are already around 150k.
It is true that these numbers are most likely underestimations as not all casualties are photographed, filmed and or uploaded to the internet. Plus ukrain seems to be more concistent in actually uploading this footage.
In reality loses could very well be equal even though the confirmed numbers heavilly favor ukraine.
The numbers you are quoting are just random noise comming from russian propaganda and have no value whatsoever.
And yes, russia is doing badly. This should have been a rollover in a matter of days or weeks, the advantage russia had was so enormous. How the russians managed to fck this up will be subject of research for many decades to come.
At this point the only thing propping up the russian army is it's artillery. Pinning ukraine in place and denying them the ability to manouvre.
Once the russian guns stop firing though this war will have run it's course. Probably by summertime we can all look back at this was and ask why it was even nessesary. And with a bit of luck putin will have his own room in the hague.
We might be wrong about every military. Modern war is mostly unknown.
Modern war is 90% logistics.
We’ve entered an age of drone and informational warfare. Tanks, BMPs, and even warships are obsolete.
Indeed
especially US military which have been mostly up against 'sandal-wearing' militaries after WWII
@@JK-dv3qe The US military is by default more effective than most militaries because they rely on technology and not manpower like Russia does. Drones, aircraft, smart weapons. Russia still relies on old tanks, old artillery, and old fashioned man power. Russia is basically stuck in the past while most western militaries are looking toward the future with technology. Not to mention that Russia doesn't have the economy to support most of these futuristic tactics.
Those of us who have lived in corrupt societies (and understand how things work in these corrupt societies) were really not that surprised.
For an army that is hopelessly corrupt and stumbles over it's own feet it seems to be doing very well.
Reminds me of Goebels 3rd Raich propaganda where they were telling how russians are basicaly stupid enimals lead to the fire by their jewish commanders. Somehow these stupid enimals killed the best army of combined europe and found themself in Berlin. Dr. Goebels died but hes job lives on. Moder western propaganda (this channel included) is like a copy/paste of Goebels work. Not suprising tho since many na-zis found refuge in US and Canada after ww2.
It doesnt do well it does terribly for what was expected of the 2nd/3rd best military in the world.
@@Lukas-ej9om Says... BBC? :) It js a simple manipation when you say something like: "they will take Kiev in 2 hours!". And when its not gonna happen you be like: "ohhhh, you are so lame!". Its like...wut? Why you made up things while 99,99% of wester folk are jgnorant beyond stupid :)
@@Lukas-ej9om They're only using 200k troops lol
@@Lukas-ej9om lol and the best military in the world cant deal with afghanistan...
My dad who was a really intelligent guy, once said to me, if you want to work out the strength of Russia, take the numbers they give you and divide by 4.
guess are hitler listening to ur dad L M A O
Thanks for the interview. Two things from me:
1 - I really appreciated your methodology in looking for information. General analysis does not go as deep as it should. I will give you an example from business. There was a local firm who sold 80% of their product to one company. In analyzing the firm, I listened to the announcements of their customer. The customer reported that it had completed the project that they were using the local firm for. It was pretty easy to see this was going to be a problem for the local firm going forward. I do see lots of Press Release analysis in this war, so thanks! I came to a similar conclusion from a different direction - budget. The announced Russian military budget is about the size of the UKs. But they have so much more to fund, some of which is really antiquated and tough to maintain. I didn't know if the Ukrainians could do much (2014 said they would not), but it was clear that the threat from Russia was exaggerated at a global level.
2 - I know a Military Intelligence Analyst at a Battalion level in the US Army very well. He never gives me specifics or anything actionable. But he did say they were told about the equipment that the top end units of the Russian Military had. That equipment was equivalent of what Western soldiers have. It is pretty clear at this point that this equipment does not reach very far into the units of the Russian Army - poor comms, no NVGs, bad body armor (if at all), bad rations. He assumed, as I think we all did, that this better equipment was in widespread use. Turns out - no.
Budget is the real thing to zero in on. There is simply no way to operate and maintain a force of 1 million on the budget as stated. That doesn't include the acquisition costs for new systems or modernization. It is actually pretty easy to see who is lying about readiness just by looking at the budget.
Russia has a large, modern army. Its just that the modern part isn't very large and the large part isn't very modern.
@@swissarmyknight4306 I like that a lot. There are a lot of Independent Sales Rep positions where they say you can work part time and you can make lots of money. I always laugh and add...yes, just not at the same time.
@@swissarmyknight4306 Thanks, you made my morning.
I’m skeptical that the top-end equipment is the equivalent of what the average Western soldier has. I’m sure the Russian government advertises it as equivalent, and perhaps the prototypes were equivalent, but I doubt the Russians have the high-tech manufacturing capability to match Western weapons that rely on computer systems, and even if they did, most of the money to build them probably got stolen.
Perun has also done a good video on how corruption destroys armies.
ruclips.net/video/i9i47sgi-V4/видео.html it's really good.
Perun in general makes very good videos.
Yes, it was excellent.
22:30 I've heard this before. The crime syndicate in Russia can basically drive up to the military base and threaten the soldiers and make them pay protection money. Imagine that! Criminals driving up to armed soldiers at their own base and threatening them!
Thing is the crime syndicates in Russia are basically loyal to the regime. So they belong to some Oligarch who probably is loyal to Putin. The soldiers can't do anything against them, because they are under protection of the ruling class. Rumors have it that Putin wants the military to have low self esteem and keep them down, so they are incompentent and can't try a coup d'etat.... but the incompetence and incapability shows when they go to war, too.
В 90-х такое вероятно могло происхождить, но сейчас любых нарушителей принято расстреливать на месте если, конечно, мы не говорим о военной части в "Сергеевке" и в других частях, расположенных на дальнем востоке, имеющих малый контроль над персоналом и повышенной криминогенной обстановкой.
@@andreysomov1688 путиноид, очнись, девяностые никуда не уходили. Тебе просто глаза телевизором замылили
Overestimating of Russia was in best interest of US and other NATO circles in order to get more funding. In reality, without nukes Russia have against whole NATO equal chance as Ukraine against them.
The US has been desperate to pivot towards China as their main expected rival since Obama, there's no need to build up Russia as a boogieman.
@@bigd8122 Ukrainian policy was then completely wrong, unless they expected Russia to just lie down and die.
I remember watching in Syria as Russia attempted to leverage the Admiral Kuznetsov as the center of a western style carrier strike group. They tried and failed, with several reported Mig-29 crash landings on deck, and had to fall back on deploying air strikes from captured air fields. Then they ran out of guided bombs and couldn't reliably strike their intended targets. Then not long after, we watched the Wagner Group unit get stomped by a small force of US Marines that, by all accounts, they greatly outnumbered in both men and equipment - and frankly, what were they thinking? That very well could have sparked a major international incident, but the US and Russia seemingly agreed to brush it under the rug.
These events alone pretty well told me at this point that the capabilities of Russia we were being sold on were either drastically overblown or nonexistent. I'm just a regular old guy with some military knowledge and it was pretty obvious to me. Maybe I should have called up these analysts and asked them if they'd seen any Russian youtube footage lately or actually read real news.
I remember on youtube, a Russian special forces soldier, lone survivor who said, the Americans didn't give them a chance. They where wiped out by artillery. All they training they had was checkmated by 155mm artillery
That Wagner story seems to be fake.
So -nothing to worry about. Relax & zelensky will soon conquer russia.
It's really amazing how terrible Russian military capability is, considering how they stomped ISIS to dust in a matter of months, something the US couldn't do in over a decade.
Guess NAVY seals are over rated. Whenever I think about navy seals I just think about operation redwings lol.
I'm puzzled why anyone would take at face value 'official sources' (particularly political sources), regardless of Russian or Western, when it comes to assessments. Both Western and Russian sources have variously (different) incentives to inflate strengths / abilities, and bury deficiencies / defects. Any assessment needs to have validation from independent, microscopic, and secondary sources, and as Dobrev points out, inputs and outputs have to make sense (ex: aircraft availability vs. "600 pilots" training) at functional and operational levels. We already know that Russia is largely a kleptocracy on the 'Federal' side, so it seems naïve to me to assume kleptocratic and corrupt practices would not still extend to the armed forces since the Cold War.... and we know that (for example) Soviet capability was inflated in various ways (or at least seriously wrong) by Western IC machinery.
People simply 'believing' the analyses produced by these 'analysts' without looking at their sources and methods are, well.... they deserve what they get.
Thank you, Ardent Glazier, for one of the best comments on this page.
Former communist governments aren’t trustworthy but like the USA, if they say it publicly it’s probably true, and they have much tighter control of the financial expenditures to make sure at least most of it is going where it should
Communists are pathological liars
Russias official sources are usually just the shit you see on the TV.
The west official sources are websites that keep records of stocks for their citizens to see for themselves, along with near-Amazon levels of corporate production/logistics.
Id say the most corrupt branch of the US military is the Navy. The army/airforce/marines however are much less "swampy".
Not even to dickride, its pretty legit.
Of course there are incompetent people, and bad accounting. This very much so is obvious.
But when the military starts acting more like a corporation than a military, that's when you know their competency is there.
Every fuckup that couldv happened during Iraq or Afghanistan had happen, and was documented to the point it was shown on MARVEL MOVIES.
So a guy wrote in a 2017 article that the Russian military wasn't a threat to Ukraine...completely ignoring the fact that the Russian army booted Ukraine out of Crimea in 2014. Fucking what?
I'm former US Army Spec Ops My father was WW2 Naval Intelligence and OSS. I dont know what western Military analyst's are smoking but You do not want to fight Russians. They do War Big. US lost its heavy armor after the First Gulf war and have been fighting Goat herders for the past 20 yrs. We dont even have Corp strength its down to brigade strength. In Russia, being a engineer working for the Military is a glamour job...Russian technology is way ahead of the US. There was no doubt after the first day of the SMO in Ukraine that the Russians were going to win. They are actually doing a complete change from their regular doctrine. Their 1st Guards division is so powerful it could drive through NATO and be eating croissant's in Paris if it wanted to. US Military's doesn't even practice large scale armor maneuver anymore. Russia has per unit far more massive firepower...their artillery grads smerch thermobaric heavy mortar's are devastating. Right now they aren't even losing men ...they scout out a position draw Ukrainian fire, stop set up massive artillery' destroy everything and inch forward to the next spot. Its patient and very terrifying. Those mercs that came back from Ukraine that served in Iraq and Afghanistan as I did, say they were not prepared for the intensity of the combat getting shot at in the woods by hidden Russian tanks......Its like WW2 eastern front on steroids'.
That's not bad English for a Russian....
I love how you're getting dismissed by the other commenters for talking facts. It's not just the USA that has dismantled it's armour either. Germany has something like 100 tanks at a state of readiness appropriate for warfare like the Russians have conducted in Ukraine. Ukraine lost more tanks than that in the first week of escalation.
The US would simply bomb the shit out of all russian ground forces in a week.
@@jamesrowlands8971 First off the US State dept pays lots of money for online trolls. Second I am pretty sure the people responding never have been in combat let alone Spec Ops. Time is the deciding factor for it is running out on NATO and the Ukraine army. War isnt so much about equipment its about supply. and Ukraine is running out. When it falls it will be like a domino effect...thats how all armies do. Just Look how we left Afghanistan total chaos ghetto style.
Hey "US Special Forces Operator"; please tell me if the Guards Tank Army is so powerful why isn't it (and the Russian army) at the Polish border after 102 days of fighting? I'll answer it for you; the Russian army is incompetent.
US intelligence is more worried about the risk of offending any big economic deals that might be in the works with belligerents rather than doing a thorough review.
This video isn't aging well. Russia is slowlu but surely picking apart Europe's largest, best trained and best equipped army.
AMEN
I've been following Ukraine coverage obsessively, and this was by far the most interesting and informative discussion of background information that I've seen. Thank you very much for making this.
You should check out the channel Perun he has some really interesting videoes on the situation of the Russian army
@@thecanadiankiwibirb4512 perun is such an amazing source of input. I was going to recommend him myself as well
You should check out RUclips channel, 'The New Atlas' for news coverage on the war, which is very informative.
You believed Ukrainian propaganda, it's that simple.
Remember SUmmer Offensive trailer and Crimea Beach Party cringe campaign?
Yeah, CIA fucked up big time this time.
The Ukrainian military had many of the same issues. Both suffer from the same soviet history.
This corruption and staff turnover becomes crippling when technical skills are needed, such as in engineering, artillery and armoured units, and on the front line where a core of professional NCOs and troops who trust them is also of great value
yet ukrainian army is destroying russian one
@@ericpaunovic3579 in a defensive war with massive support from the West. Just sayin'.
@@KingRavenfilms soon enough it'll be an offensive, it already is in some sense (belogorod bombed, explosions across russia) its only matter of time victorious armies of west engage.
@@ericpaunovic3579 no
@@MaximillionBucks yes
Still can't admit he was wrong.
Amazing.
Funny how he said the Ukrainians have been making advances in the Dunbass for 8 years when there was suppose to be a cease fire there.
How'd they do that?
okay he made a mistake but why write strange things like.
"Still can't admit he was wrong.
Amazing." ? who says he read what you wrote, noticed he made a mistake. You also do not notice that you are writing nonsense right?
I guess now we end up underestimating the Russian military because of fake number shared by the Ukrainian military (the military under massive pressure begging for international help is sharing the correct numbers? 😂)
When some random Bulgarian blogger and part time analysts asses the state and the capability of Russian armed forces, from the open source data, better than the whole western intelligence aparatus with their infinite resources, spies, satellites and analysts.
And all that Stanislav done was following the local media and applying some common sense...
But it wasn't only the Western intelligence community that failed to see the actual state of the Russian military. Even the independent analysts that were considered the most prominent experts on everything related to the Russian military, also miserably failed at what they do. Here I would include Micheal Kofman who constantly saw Russian military as a 10 foot juggernaut ready to crush the Baltic states and Poland before NATO could muster forces to counter them...
You fail to mention that the Russian Elite (Putin and cronies) failed to see in what shape the army was in. It's divine justice that Putins invasion fails because of corruption and incompetence...
Key word here is "blogger", which already drops a huge shadow on him. Russia uses very small forces in Ukraine like 10% (Ukraine has notable numerical advantage like x3, so what Russia is doing is for history books). Russia has no goal to destroy cities that's why Russia ignores most of the infrustructure as most of these cities will be Russian and population there is mostly Russian. I guess you would be impressed if Russia would use aviation left and right like US usually does (they expected that, that's why they evacuated their embassies, but Russia didn't bait) but that's not the Russian way. Russia's goal is not to capture territory but to destroy Ukrainian army and its military complex. At first they were reluctant as it would mean to eleminate tens if not hundreds of thousands solders who are also basically Russians. Russia was not looking forward to it but have to if those don't surrender.
@@_Epsilon_ no its easy; the Russian army is as noted in the interview corrupt and incompetent. And its obvious when you look at the map and consider this was "planned", 103 days has passed and the fascists has only managed to grab 100km of territory... Russian army consists of thieving and raping Gopniks led by drunkards. The result is a shit show and as you noted will go down in the history books...
@@_Epsilon_ Thank you
I'll add another thing, Ukraine was preparing for it for 8 years, built tons of fortefications with reinforced concrete that hard to crack. Baltic states and Poland have that? Ukrainian ground troops are bigger than any NATO troops aside from US and Turkey and they are not in open field.
_10 foot juggernaut ready to crush the Baltic states and Poland before NATO could muster forces to counter them..._
Crush in what sense? Russia can bomb the sh*t out of anyone, it is a matter of political will and goals. Russia doesn't have such goal in Ukraine, because it is Russia that will have to rebuilt everything. If Ukrainian forces hide in residential buildings for example (like they were doing in Mariupol) then it becomes urban war and it is not a quick process. Also most footage we get from there are from DNR and LNR forces and Akhmat guys, not from regular Russian army.
I don't understand why everyone thought Russia had such a fantastic military. Russia has done crap in virtually every war it has been engaged in the last 100 years. I think it is more a case of Western military analysts and defence industry overrating Russia in order to draw more resources to themselves.
have done crap won a lot of wars
@@jackhardy3905 Most of the wars Russia has been a primary belligerent in in the past 100 years have been civil wars or independence wars. They lost a bunch of independence wars after the end of WW1 and won some independence wars (as the Soviet Union) when no one helped the state trying to break free. They also lost to Poland right after it became independent.
Then, they spent the interwar years reconquering a bunch of the small states that gained independence.
Then, WW2 stuff: They jointly invaded Poland alongside Germany, invaded some tiny Baltic nations, "won" in the Winter War at massive losses considering what they were fighting against, "won" against Germany at absolutely horrific losses, and then won against Japan after China and the US had done all the work.
For the rest of the Soviet Union's existence, their wars were about keeping its member states from leaving, until they fought and lost in Afghanistan, which spelled the end of the Soviet Union.
Then, Russia split off some regions of Georgia and Moldova, lost to the Chechens, later eventually won against the Chechens, split off another region of Georgia, pretended they didn't invade Crimea while they were invading Crimea, and dropped a bunch of bombs on people in the desert.
This is not a very inspiring military history. Most of the conflicts they won were against vastly inferior enemies, they invaded themselves several times (and lost one of them), had embarrassingly poor performance against several that everyone thought they would steamroll, and the one time they were truly tested they suffered horrific losses by comparison.
@@gimmethegepgun Well they lost to Poland because Russia was was exhausted by civill war while Poles received fresh supplies from France UK US did all work ? Russia destroyed Japanese army way before US joined war Khalhin Gol ,Hasan US fought with the navy not ground force
@@jackhardy3905 Still lost to Poland.
Also, Khalkhin Gol? lol those battles were tiny compared to what China did.
US fought with navy, not ground? Tell that to Okinawa.
@@gimmethegepgun Chines war was a steilmate for most of the time and Japan had way more man on the mainland than in Okinawa won't to Poland in 39
Isn’t Russia winning now?
@N Fels you don't live in reality.
If we were wrong about Russia, is was for the same reason we are wrong about ourselves. For that matter, how do we know we are wrong about Russia? Russia has not used the full magnitude of its conventional power against Ukraine. In a conventional war Russia may still have the power to overrun all of Western Europe up to the Rhine. No that they will. Even a restored East Bloc would be a burned and an expense to them, not an asset.
This is a pretty good brief.
I must admit though, its pretty clear that the inability of intelligence professionals to get it right is troubling.
However to be cautious isn’t a bad thing, as preparing to fight a war against a military that is stronger that it actually is, leaves you with an advantage, assuming the investment decisions in men, materiel
and capability are sound and sufficient to meet the expected threat.
When i was reading stories about how Russian troops were selling fuel to buy alcohol and food whilst on exercise in Belarus, leading up-to the invasion, i knew this was going to be a debacle.
But when the system of government in place in Russia is a kleptocracy, would you expect that this mentality wouldn’t infiltrate from general officers all the way down to privates?
I think forecasting how military forces will actually perform in a war is really difficult with all the variables and outside factors to consider. The Russian military wasn't prepared for the task, I think that is the only thing currently that is clear.
Western intelligence has been rotting for 20 years. Ever since we "sexed up" the intelligence about WMD's in Iraq there has been more and more political interference, control and appointments.
It doesn't matter if what you say is true, it matters that your report reflects the ideological bias of the political leadership.
The people at ground level can feed in good intel but watch as it moves up the chain and what comes out of the top is the exact polar opposite of reality but perfectly conforms to the political desires of the people in charge.
There was huge amounts of intel on Afghanistan, not a single grunt thought the Afghan Army would hold up but we are in a post truth society where pronouns are more important than performance.
@Lawofimprobability In theory their logistics should be better but the corruption killed it.
If you watch all the interviews with captured Russians from Kyiv a couple of them stated they were on exercise for 2+ months and were issued all of the shiny toys like NVG's and optics.
A few days before the exercises ended the officers stole all the shiny toys to sell them.
Then they had a surprise invasion with no gear, fuel, ammo or spares.
Had you not noticed the cheap Russian ammo and gear on the US civilian gun market? It's all stolen...
@n1uk The talking heads on tv are chosen because they say what the establishment wants them to say.
There is a small group of media friendly "experts" who have zero current experience on the ground. The Ukrainian and Estonian intelligence services have vastly more experience with the Russians and have a far more honest and nuanced view.
Intel is supposed to be bottom up but instead it's top down and must follow the party line.
It could be deliberate posturing, "aww we're doomed, help us" to trick the enemy into thinking they got the upper hand. But yeah, I as Ukrainian had no clue our military could stand up to that, even with all the ruz deficiencies. My understanding of our army was formed in 90s-00s which... Yeah, you can probably imagine. The end of USSR, nobody's preparing to fight anyone any time soon anyway... It was abysmal.
People always forget that, in a dictatorship, the job of the military is to look dangerous but have no real teeth. This is because they want their foreign enemies afraid, but don't want the military to be a rival for power, therefore the armed forces are kept intentionally weak whilst portrayed as strong.
Also the money which would have to be spend toward military, were actually spend on expensive yachts for the Russian oligarchs. They probably upgraded one or 2 tanks... and the rest were only "repainted", the actual money went to the corrupt officials.... but the thing is... how these same corrupt officials, thought their army is actually strong.... or they thought the whole world works like that?! It seems Putin doesn't have even one friend at the lower ranks in the military to tell him the truth. Maybe sometimes they should go there, at the normal military, not elite forces, not guard divisions, just regular folks and see how are the things there, because this is the way to see if something is not right. Seeing problems in the army is like seeing a cockroach... if you see 1, there are actually 10 000. If you see one corrupt official... they are actually 10 000...
Another example why, despite always being portrayed as strong decisive and efficient, dictatorships are among the most fragile systems of government
That’s not why the Russian army is a disaster though. Russia is a culture of theft and corruption, and that is reflected in their military.
Putin the WEF Quisling under Schwab has placed all the 'elite' Omon & special forces etc under his own National guard Praetorian guard banner due to him not trusting the wider Russian army command . . for good reason as Putin the global young leader is tasked with a one world govt & no nation states , as in no Russia , Putin nor his cronies have not denied he is WEF yet , as Klaus Schwab boasted he is
@@DrunkbearZ Not for an second do I suppose you are from Putin Russia's quarantined from wider west globalist Gulag net . . supposed what if Putin an Manchurian candidate WEF who likes to kiss young boys bellies infamous & normal in WEF pedo ranks & his husband his gay judo pal turned (!) general overnight . . lots of the non elite mafia clans are gay
Nice analysis, basically that's the conscript army I remember. I served there in 2015, had a story when me and few guys were sent to the construction site for night so that sergeant (middle age fat dude) could make money from it. Wish this sick regime will fall someday so there wouldn't be such a stupid stories anymore...
And the west would still hate you and want you in an endless 90s situation...
Can you explain this further? You were sent to a construction site to do work, only for your sergeant to pocket the money that you were supposed to get paid?
@@Rokaize Russian soldiers are traditionally used as practically slave labour force by army officers, so I doubt these guys were promised any payment.
I remember reading an interesting opinion somewhere stating that the overestimation of Russian military power was what lead Austria and Germany to escalate arming and mobilising which in turn triggered the French and the Brittish to do the same and it all spiraled into WW1. Seems like we haven't learned all that much.
In defence of Austrian fear of Russia, when the Austrian ambassador threatened to mobilise three army corps against Russia Tsar Alexander III twisted his fork into a knot and threw it down onto the plate of the ambassador proclaiming “that is what I am going to do to your three army corps!”
Such an action would obviously make an impression.
source is trust me bro and twitter :))
So much for experts! And the "professional intelligence" community! Sad that the US intelligence capability has degraded so much - and very dangerous to the world! There should be an independent examination of the failures and not left to the people who failed!.
It wasn't western intelligence, many of them sounded the alarm, it was the media and similar figures.
Stanimir Dobrev is an excellent example of someone who does HUMINT (human intelligence), something Western countries used to be good at -- back in the days of the Cold War.
Now? It seems far too much intelligence analysis is based on perusing top level official reports and documentation produced by a potential adversary, including their propaganda, coupled with high tech "national assets", which provide awesome remote sensing capability, but are incapable of sniffing out the detailed reality on the ground.
Plus, one has to consider the ideological filter the analysis is put through, and the end goals of the intelligence product. Which is usually to incentivise the procurement of weaponry or to justify the deployment of additional "national assets". Are we looking at an example of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower so eloquently warned against?
Or basically why those of us who use Telegram and actually read what the Russians put out and talk to the Russians see shit coming far in advance that comes a shocking news if it ever even makes it to Western cable months later. One had its incredibly gratifying to finally be vindicated about stuff after months of waiting on the other is incredibly annoying waiting for the talking news heads to admit it and hearing people constantly dismiss it as Russian propaganda.
Why is Russia winning in Ukraine. It gets what it wants in Ukraine. It gets what it wants economically from the West. NATO is not making progress. So NATO is watching(studying) this amazing force work.
Interesting. The weakness of units further East might explain why the Russians re-deployed tired forces in the Kiev area to the Eastern part of Ukraine. They literally didn't have viable reserves anywhere else to do the job.
It was also withdraw or lose those units entirely. They were probably a week or two away from a counteroffensive pushing East from Lviv to cut the supply lines to the units attacking Kyiv from the North. It would have meant the loss of I think 10-20,000 troops, and an utterly humiliating defeat, as opposed to the relatively orderly withdrawal they did manage to execute while Ukraine was still gathering mass for that counteroffensive.
I am thinking to myself that perhaps the idea behind this attack on multiple fronts was for Russia to make supplying the army easier by not all troops relying on a few railway lines in the same area, but instead spread the armies out so they could be easier supplied.
And another reason would be to to force the small Ukrainian army to spread out over a large area - an area so large that it would be impossible for it to cover all terrain. And here would opening in Ukrainian line show themselves - and become open for the Russian troops to exploit.
I theory I see no flaw in that reasoning. However the terrain in the north favored the defenders. A traitor did not blow up a bridge so large parts of southern Ukraine quickly fell into Russian hands. The south and east did have favorble tank terrain with flat ground and short supply lines.
The Russians learned much from earlier mistakes and regrouped what they had to the south and east, and hoped to at least take Donbass as a consolation prize after the overthrow of the entire Ukrainian state had failed.
Russia never wanted to occupy Kiev, it has little interest in occupying Russian minority areas. It went West to destroy Ukraines military infrastructure so that it could then take the east with less casualties, which is what it's currently doing.
@@slayerhuh404 So let me get this straight one of the stated objectives was to oust the "Nazis" out of Ukraine, but upon getting absolutelypillaged, Russia repivots toward the Donbass where it's not even stomping Ukraine with Ukraine retaking Kharkhiv. Yeah no buddy, Russia had big ambitions and unlike the US in Iraq, couldn't materialize them remotely so now it's coping and desiring to break off ethnic Russian territories to prop up its two Neo-Colonies in Donetsk and Luhansk.
I suspect that Putin had counted on more help from Belarus. Belarus may be a stalinist holdout but the help they allowed was pretty much restriced to allow Russia to invade from Belarus territory. Apperantly the war isn't popular in Belarus and I believe that Lukashenko are shrewd enough to distance himself from Putin so he can remain in power if Putin falls. And there are Belarusian citizens that have joined the Ukrainian forces. A bit like how Franco was somehow allowed to keep ruling Spain after WW2 despite being a fascist that had been on friendly terms with Hitler that had helped put him in power.
And Russia is incompetent compared to who exactly? When is the last time any ''Western Powers'' fought a huge white army like the Ukrainians, supplied by NATO? Even the small Serbian force, with no support, proved very difficult for NATO to gang up on. Let's see what Western armies look like when they're not picking on ''developing populations'', for example if they took on Russia. They wouldn't look anywhere near as effective as they did bullying Iraq/LIbya/Afghanis/Viets etc., and there was plenty of incompetence in all these wars. And it's obvious the Russians are also exploiting their own version of ''colonial'' troops, meaning that the standards will be lower than the core Russian stock. The difference is that ''Western'' armies aren't just going to be exploiting their colonial troops in the future, their troops will literally BE foreign populations. Already the US military is unrecognisable from what it looked like in WW2.
White army? Are you saying white soldiers are better? That sounds racist.
For fighting a country which is armed and trained by NATO for 8 years and fully supported by arms shipping, Russia in fact isn't doing bad as it makes slowly but steady progress in the Donbas and Ukrainian forces there are close to get encircled. Ukraine is a country with NATO standards, we can't compare this with Iraq.
Well Iraq also had access to a large well trained and experienced army and their stuff wasnt any worse than what Ukraine has. In fact they were mostly using Soviet Gear themselves. So you can def compare it to Ukraine.
@@karlzuhlke3114 Nope you can't compare them. Ukraine is double in size with hills and many rivers, double population as well. Iraq is a flat dessert.
Also 1st Iraq war happened after the fall of Sovietunion and therefore had no one arms shipping.
Then the 2nd Iraq war, it even had nothing anymore. Ukraine was the biggest land force in Europe with over 2400 tanks and fully supported by NATO.
First of Ukraine doesnt get fully supported by Nato yes they get some gear far less than Nato could provide. It also doesnt have the biggest landforce in Europe thats Russia. It also doesnt have 2400 tanks it had less than 500 when the war started.
Also in case you didnt notice Iraq has big rivers too. And Ukraine on the eastern side of the Dnipier river is mostly flat steppe (the place were Russia currently advanced a mile village per day). During WW2 both blitzted through that territoriy in weeks and Russia is still stuck.
@@karlzuhlke3114 Ukraine gets fully supported by NATO within its possibilities which are limited by own needs and political games.
Russia isn't Europe, but Eurasia. Go look on a globe. Your source about tank numbers is wrong, Ukraine had around 2500 tanks before the war.
Russia makes steady progress in Donbas and Ukies now even confess they suffer horrible high losses with at least 150 dead per day and 800 wounded. What is rather the bottom line.
Donbas was heavily entrenched and fortified for 8 years as they expected a Russian intervention. During WWII this area wasn't entrenched.
of course!!! the initial mobilisation on the Ukraine border, when Russia was saying "they weren't going to invade" was a massive backlog of bad logistics before the battle even started.
I just realised basically
If I had a dollar for every "Russia is losing" video from armchair general RUclipsrs I'd be a millionaire.
Fr lmao
Except even if they capture all of Ukraine they will never be as strong as they once were. Europe now knows that Russia is a real threat, and will act accordingly, and the cost of the war and the sanctions will devastate the Russian economy for years. Russia is going to be China's puppet soon enough, and China doesn't need them to be strong.
If I had a dollar for every time I hear “Russia is going to totally win soon, just wait bro” “just one more city bro” I’d be a fucking billionaire
@ nicholas ross you would have max 5$
@@petkoradacko79 5 times is still bullshit. And I guess by the time this is over I’ll have at least $100 .
Re: pre-conflict assistance to Ukraine it is a narrow line to walk. If the US/Europe had announced significant military/military funding aid to Ukraine in late 2021 the Russians could have accelerated their timetable and attacked before it was in place. That is why maintaining sufficient defense/military forces is important. Once an enemy has a significant advantage it is very difficult to catch up because your enemy will see what you are doing and attack first.
Admiral Jackie Fisher put it well in the early 1900s when commanding the British Mediterranean Fleet. He was promised significant reinforcements in event of crisis and he said I need them now both so the units are properly trained/can function together and because in a crisis the government won’t want to send them for fear of starting a war. What could the US have done to reinforce the Philippines in 1940 that would have prevented a Japanese attack without triggering said attack before the reinforcements were in place?
WoW! Awesome content and information. I see why his deep dive into local sources can be much more effective that crunching published numbers. Thanks for this excellent interview!
Another thing to add. If you are a Western military commander, you are going to get more money if you point how dangerous your enemy is. Same thing with the 'missile gap'. In the United States, during the Cold War, the missile gap was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with those of the U.S. (a lack of military parity). Even the contradictory CIA figures for the USSR's weaponry, which showed a clear advantage for the US, were far above the actual count. Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it was soon demonstrated that the gap was entirely fictional.
Can we also admit that Ukrainians occurred to be much more resilient and determined that all initially thought? Because, you know, the medal has two sides.
Metaphorically, The Russian Army went for a long drive without packing toilet paper.
The soldiers were forced to cut off their undies to wipe, having already dropped their trousers to push one out, but you can only do that once.
Then, it is skid marks everyday until you go home. And take the flies with you. Airborne.
The best advice I received in tha Army was to always stir your brew, coffee, with a rough stick. You can not take the risk of a smooth stick, because someone may have wiped their arse with it. Here in Australia, we have a deadly bush, with massive stinging leaves, larger than toilet paper squares, called Gympie Gympie. If you wipe with one of those leaves, you will end up choppered out, Dust off, to hospital. Even after months, idiots who do this would report ongoing severe pain. Some asked for Rectum Transplants. However, knowing many of the idiots I served with, The new Arsehole would probably reject them.
"Pokazukha" and "pripiski" are two important terms to learn before any serious analysis of the Kremlin policies in past or today. Some "values" are so "traditional" that they survive any regime's change. As long as the regime stays authoritarian.
Then ukr regim is authorian cause they had and have even worse problems in military
How unique; an Analyst who actually analyzed information instead of just parroting the "well-known facts"!
I think the bots have well and truly found your channel Bernhard
It is crazy how russian bots are coming here
Correct me if I'm wrong. But doesn't those 20% of Ukraine also include the areas that was occupied in 2014? So, a more interesting question would be, how much more territory have Russia taken after the 24th of February?
well i dont know in % but if you dont count crimea and the separatis teritories its fucking little compared to what they lost over all but they lost so much cause kyiv was there main target and only after if failed they focused on the southern territoryes so if you dont count russian losses on kyiv and count only there losses in the south its may be even trade off for russia ?? dont know depends what standards you use by western cultures its a fail by asian cultures its win cause they all ways swarmed whit mass conscripts and sacrificed them to take over land
They might have doubled the territory
I think he means 20% in total including Donbas, Crimea
It was 4/5% beforehand, so they've gained 15 %
At the end of the day they control less now than they did months ago. How any could possibly see this as anything other than a major strategic defeat is grasping at straws. Nothing about the Russian plan indicated limited wargoals. Kyiv was the priority and they failed to take it.
From what is said here I am astounded that Russia even managed to move an army to the Ukrainian border at all let alone invade.
Edit: lol typed this right before Bernard said the exact same thing.
It took a year and they had to be tricked, by saying they would go into exercices.
Your bias is very clear and completely at odds with many experienced, decorated senior Western officers (included specialists in strategy) who do not share your low opinion of the Russian Army.
@@Internetbutthurt yeah, what an obvious bias, it'd be a shame if someone was openly biased. Let's just look at your other comments real quick. Oh, pro-Russian troll looking to instigate flame wars under like every comment.
It isn't that hard to use existing rail networks to move troops into a relatively temperate and well populated area.
- the troops from the east probably lived in worse conditions than what they had in the staging areas.
LOL. If you believe the empire of lies, russia cant even make a stove. hahahaa
Russia is fighting a force that was trained by NATO Special Forces and are equipped with its weapons that were preparing for Russian invasion for over 8 years with help of U.S, Canada, and Brits.