The Russian Army is Worse by the Day

Today, I decided to look at Volyamedia for their take on the anniversary of the start of the war. And they have an incredibly valuable take on the Russian army, which is less and less capable. It is not just because of the loss of experience every time an officer or sergeant dies. It is because the Russian army has evolved that it started with the late Soviet Union.

So when I found these four posts, I figured they were worth sharing. These are not Western analysts. So it is coming from Russia. It will also explain something else: the biomass that is the enlisted force is unable to work together.

The armies of Imperial Russia were run similarly, though. And they were able to organize both in 1905, famously, the crew of the Potemkin, and in 1917. At some point, even a mass of brigands organizes. What is the major difference? They had an ideology to rally around.

So, without any further ado, remember: these are Russians addressing the issues within the force. Post one, post two, post three, post four:

How the Russian Armed Forces have changed over four years of war. Part 1: people

On February 24, 2026, it will be four years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Over this time, the invading army has changed significantly. In this series of posts, we will try to analyze what has changed and what has remained the same. How the people, the rules by which they live and die, have changed.

Let’s start with the people. The regular army in Russia effectively ceased to exist by mid-September 2022. The groups invading Ukraine consisted of approximately 85% of regular officers and contract soldiers, and only 15% of conscripts, who were hastily transferred to contracts. The irregular and mercenary formations consisted of former professional soldiers with experience in wars in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya, and counter-insurgency operations in Africa.

In the occupied territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine since 2014, volunteer units were mobilized, partly consisting of locals, partly of those who came from Russia, as well as forcibly mobilized local residents, who began to be drafted from mid-February 2022.

The combat readiness of the forcibly mobilized and their equipment left much to be desired, and the combat readiness of the volunteer units, which became part of the so-called LNR and DNR corps, greatly depended on the specific unit, its commanders, and those who served in them, but all of them were poorly equipped and had a mixed set of weapons.

Before the start of the invasion, the Russian Armed Forces consisted of approximately 900,000 people, but it was difficult to gather 190–210,000 people for the attack on Ukraine, of whom only 40–50,000 had combat experience (in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya).

From February 24 to May 30, 2022, the Russian Armed Forces lost 27,178 people killed, missing and captured, about 36,000 became unfit for any service due to injuries, and the total number of wounded, concussed and injured in the combat zone approached 80,000 people.

By the summer of 2022, the regular Russian army had effectively ceased to exist. They tried to patch it up with the recruitment of volunteers in Russia and limited mobilization, replenishments (including conscripts) from permanent dislocation points, mercenaries (including foreign ones), prisoners and widespread forced mobilization in the so-called LNR/DNR. The pogrom organized by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against the Russians in the Kharkiv region in early September 2022 showed that without full-scale mobilization, Russia would be left without any armed forces and all the territories in Ukraine captured since 2014 by November.

From the end of September of that year, a flood of unprepared and separated from their families men from all over Russia poured into the troops. Unlike the already battle-hardened contract soldiers, who received from 28 to 120 thousand, the mobilized were paid 190–200 thousand rubles a month, which immediately led to conflicts in the units and the practice of extortion.

From a military point of view, the army, despite the gained combat experience, has become worse than it was before the start of the war. The lame pre-war discipline, which was built in most units and units on threats, beatings and shouting, has finally become disabled, as from the first days of the war it began to rely on torture, executions, humiliation, and with the arrival of prisoners in the troops — on sexual violence. And the purpose of all these actions was not so much to keep the personnel in subordination for the performance of combat tasks, as to keep them in complete obedience — to silently give what the commanders and their overseers ask for, not to dare to complain to the military prosecutor’s office, to go without question to perform any tasks, from the executions of the civilian population in the occupied territories and targeted looting to suicidal attacks and acting as “racks” — singles, pairs or trios, going into the gray zone or the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

And here it is worth analyzing in detail why such a metamorphosis happened with the Russian army. How it turned from a refuge for losers into a state bandit formation after the start of the war.

@Volyamedia

How the Russian Armed Forces Have Changed Over Four Years of War. Part 2: Officers Are Not Gentlemen

Recently, an investigation appeared online, in which journalists thoroughly analyzed the conversations and correspondence of Major General Roman Demurchiev, who in 2024 held the position of deputy commander of the 20th Combined Arms Army of the Western Military District. The correspondence and conversations contain many references to the execution of subordinates and prisoners, torture, extortion, and cutting off the ears of prisoners and the killed. If it’s a surprise to some that a Russian general behaves like an animal, then it’s not a surprise to us — we wrote dozens of articles about the order in the Russian Armed Forces back in 2022. Almost everything that Demurchiev talks about in the video is the norm for the Russian army since the First Chechen War. Almost, because the scale of extortion from their own soldiers has greatly increased since then, as soldiers began to be paid as much as they never were before.

Another difference is the appearance of a large number of prisoners in the army, who have effectively replaced the “veterans” or “conscripts” and have become a tool of intimidation for mobilized and contract soldiers in the hands of officers and generals.

Demurchiev is a typical representative of the Russian command. He began his career in the army about 30 years ago and went through the Chechen wars, the war in Georgia, and Syria. He started as a lieutenant and rose to the rank of major general.

People like him experienced hazing in military schools, quickly learned cruelty in the Chechen war, cut off and dried the ears of prisoners, tortured those they considered enemies, and beat their own subordinates “for the sake of education”.

Demurchiev’s generation in the current Russian army is commanders and deputy commanders of combined arms armies, division commanders, and chiefs of staff of Russian troop groups in Ukraine. The convicted former commander of the 58th Army, Major General Popov, is almost a twin brother of Demurchiev in terms of personal qualities and career path.

The previous generation is a step higher — for example, the current commander of the Land Forces, Andrey Mordvichev, who by the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine had already become the commander of one of the groups.

Despite their higher career achievements, Mordvichev’s generation and the neighboring generation of Surovkin are fundamentally no different from their younger colleagues. Both groups went through the Soviet army and Soviet military education. The order in the army has not changed since the replacement of the USSR with the Russian Federation. In all units, relations with the personnel are almost always built through humiliation and brute force. A soldier is nothing, a conscript is nothing squared. A real officer will not deal with this “biomass”, his upbringing will be handled by sergeants and veterans. The current major generals and lieutenant generals are used to considering any communication with ordinary soldiers beneath their dignity.

This is a direct legacy of Soviet army realities, in which there was no distinction between officers and soldiers. All of them were from similar villages, from similar families. Young lieutenants and captains wanted to stand out from the herd of downtrodden and eternally battered soldiers. They loved to talk about officer’s honor, the officer corps, and some kind of officer’s uniqueness. But this uniqueness often had no basis. In terms of mental abilities, most officers were not much different from soldiers. In terms of habits and upbringing, they were not different at all. Therefore, the “comrade officers” chose a simple and understandable way of self-affirmation — the humiliation of powerless subordinates, often through veterans, who were happy to vent their accumulated anger on fresh recruits.

How the Russian Armed Forces Have Changed Over Four Years of War. Part 3: Officers Are Not Gentlemen

Officers living in conditions of constant service violence often transferred this practice to their personal lives. A person gets used to humiliating the weak. In the service, it’s soldiers or anyone lower in rank than you. At home, it’s your wife and children. Not everyone behaved this way, but many officers of the Soviet Army and later the Russian Armed Forces did.

Such behavior was a guarantee of a successful career. In peacetime, soldiers who had been driven into a corner would do whatever you ordered. In combat conditions, they would also unquestioningly carry out any order. This is important not because the average Russian or Soviet officer could issue some brilliant military directive, but because their superiors would demand unquestioning compliance with orders. Just like them, only with bigger stars on their epaulets and wider stripes.

The principle of “I’m the boss — you’re shit” when transferred to the conditions of war mutated dramatically and turned Russian soldiers and military personnel in general into monsters. In war, even a beaten, downtrodden private could become a god for civilians or prisoners. Just because the soldier had a machine gun, and the civilians or prisoners didn’t.

Thousands of war crimes were committed in this way. Murders, tortures, rapes, lootings, and marauding. The easiest way to hide war crimes from all those human rights activists and prosecutors was to make sure your subordinates were either involved in these crimes themselves or at least didn’t consider them wrong, but heroic. Thus, practices such as cutting off prisoners’ ears or “the frog” — when a prisoner or defiant civilian was stretched on an armored vehicle or stone and his limbs were beaten with a sledgehammer (yes, if you think that sledgehammer was invented by Prigozhin, you’re mistaken) — became common in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine. Anyone who had the opportunity to fight in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria, or Ukraine has certainly encountered at least one of these practices, and most likely several.

The survival rule formulated by such commanding fathers for soldiers and junior commanders was: “If you want to be with the strong, be cruel.” This perverted code had been developing for decades. Those who weren’t ready to accept it didn’t survive in the army or didn’t make a great career there. There were exceptions, of course, but they were rare. One of them, before the Budanov case, was the current head of the Russian General Staff, Gerasimov. After the Budanov case, Gerasimov faced a choice — to save himself or make a career. He, as you can see, chose a career.

“When I entered the academy, I wanted to be an officer from the eponymous movie. A father and mentor, uncompromising, competent, decisive. Uncompromisingness broke down on a stool in the locker room, where I was beaten during the military training course in the academy. Then you make compromises every day, settle in, get used to it. And then you’re no longer a lieutenant, but a major or lieutenant colonel, who remembers his youthful principles only over a bottle. And in the service, you’re just as vicious shit as your colleagues,” says the deputy commander of a Russian infantry regiment, who is fighting in Ukraine and started his service almost 20 years ago.

In such an atmosphere, neither idealists, military geniuses, nor talented managers could survive. Therefore, both the late Soviet and Russian armies became a haven for cruel mediocrities. This was largely facilitated by the organization of society, where service in the army on a contract basis became for many provincial residents one of the few alternatives to prison or poverty. You don’t know much, but you want some money — go into the army, the police, or the Emergencies Ministry.

@Volyamedia

How the Russian Armed Forces Have Changed Over Four Years of War. Part 4: The Refuge of the Grays

Under Putin, the Russian army became a career opportunity for those who were afraid, couldn’t, or didn’t want to try themselves in something else. Contract service was also taken up by yesterday’s conscripts whose parents didn’t have the money to pay for their education and life in big cities, by lost and aimless men who didn’t want to leave their native lands.

Their commanders were Demurchiyev, Muradov, Popov (and this is far from the worst option) and the like. A small part of the army gained some combat experience, but the rest performed more or less ordinary work. They repaired equipment, built or repaired something, transported cargo, laid wires, etc.

Under Sergei Shoigu, who knew how to impress Putin, the army gradually turned into a highly ineffective enterprise, providing demonstrations for the tsar and the people several times a year. The key to success in the Russian Armed Forces during Shoigu’s time was the commanders’ ability to roll out polished equipment on time, which wouldn’t break down during the parade. “Train” (sorry, but this term is most appropriate here) three crews from an entire tank division for a quick passage of the tank biathlon course. Ensure the launch of a training missile so that it doesn’t explode on takeoff and hits its target at the end of its life path.

In that pre-war army, there were still a certain number of hereditary military men who went to serve in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers. Some of them even managed to retain their human form at the expense of their careers, and some were truly professional soldiers. But this part was vanishingly small. That’s why since 2014, mercenary formations have begun to appear and expand in Russia, which were used in combat operations instead of regular units, as the latter were simply not enough to satisfy Putin’s growing geopolitical ambitions. The Russian Armed Forces still had enough units for the battles near Debaltsevo in 2014, but not for the operation in Syria.

When the invasion of Ukraine was being prepared in February 2022, the army needed everything that could move in a certain direction, somehow be able to shoot and carry out simple commands. The combat-ready core was supplemented by two-thirds of conditionally combat-ready units, without informing them about what they would face, what to do and where to do it, and then they were sent in columns to Ukraine.

That army ended by mid-September 2022. It was replaced by another — the current one, in which most of the commanders and generals remained who proved their right to be with the strong — cruelty towards both their own and others, the ability to report correctly to higher authorities, hide losses, rob soldiers and officers without a fuss (not forgetting to share with their superiors), Those who are ready to destroy any number of their subordinates and civilians to fulfill the most useless task.

At the beginning of the Russian invasion, more than a dozen generals and under fifty colonels and majors were killed. Many of them died trying to force their non-combat-ready units to perform tasks and not disperse. In the first year of the invasion, the same fate befell hundreds of lieutenants and captains. All of them were replaced by commanders of a new type — sitting as far away from the front as possible, not sparing anyone, putting their careers above everything else.

Among themselves, they can curse Gerasimov, Belousov, Teplinsky, Mordvichev, and the most daring or drunk — Putin. But in public, all these “warriors” will play the role of exemplary defenders of the fatherland, so as not to lose the money and power over people that they have finally received.

Their subordinates — ordinary soldiers — see this duality, but they don’t care about it. Their main task is to survive. If necessary, at the expense of their neighbor in the hole. Their main explanation of what is happening around them is “it just happened”. They still learned to justify their actions and decisions (or the lack of actions and decisions) with external and non-dependent on themselves reasons. For the most part, they don’t learn to fight, they learn to survive, adapt and not think. This is what the Russian army looks like four years after the start of the war.

Early in the war, Valery Gerasimov was dreaming of wide maneuver warfare, as Georgy Zhukov did during the Great Patriotic War. He dreamed of artillery preparing the way for the infantry and armor, and fast advances towards the heart of Ukraine. And the Red Army was able to pull this off because they had the personnel and the existential need to do this. They also had the industrial capacity to send tanks to the front and the support of the US through Lend-Lease. I know the last point is kind of a sore point with Russians and Russophiles these days. Because even admitting they got help betrays weakness.

The Red Army had mass. But the army that Gerasimov took to war in 2022 was the most professional army Russia ever had, and I include the Empire. Because Russia has always gone to war with conscripted troops, most of whom never come home. Yet, they were not able to carry out his dreams of wide maneuver, and the god of war, the artillery, prepared the way for wide frontal advances. The run towards Kyiv was not done in a wide front, for example. And it got stuck on a road. And the logistics trains broke early during those early days and have yet to recover. In fact, we are back to horses and donkeys. Because Russia has lost the ability to move much of this sorely needed materiel by truck. And they have never been good at this either. But now troops can die from lack of food and water on the front lines. This is one reason some troops have surrendered.

The army that Volyamedia describes is more a mass of men under arms than an army. And their capabilities have been degraded over the last four years. Paul Warburg has a good video breakdown of some of this, without going deeply into the problems with the Russian Army as systemic issues going back to at least the Soviet Union, if not earlier.

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And I will admit that some of the reforms Russia implemented in the RuAF under Sergei Shoigu were good on paper. For example, the BARS Battalions were modeled on the US National Guard, units that would serve for local defense or civil affairs. That they now serve on the front lines is another story, as is the case with the US National Guard. But they are not completely trained to the level where they can be incorporated into the order of battle with ease. That this is now a full systemic issue across the force is another matter. Remember, Russians get two weeks of basic training, when lucky. They get to fire their rifles once or twice, emptying a couple magazines. They get to throw a few hand grenades. They are trained to counter drones that defy logic. Some of these troops contact the I Want to Live Foundation while still in training. And then they are thrown into the meat grinder.

What Shoigu did, and this is systemic, is line his pockets. The other day, I addressed one general cutting the ears of the enemy dead. This is also systemic across the force. And so is sexual violence and other forms of torture to maintain whatever passes for good order and discipline in this force. And they use barrier troops, which is not a new innovation. I guess Gerasimov decided that those were needed, like the Red Army.

As I said yesterday, the difference between the imperial army of 1917 and today is ideology. Those people hoped that a proletarian revolution would improve their lives. The country sank into a civil war that killed a lot of people. And what emerged was the USSR. The Red Army reflected that ideology. I could make a case that the present Russian Army is a reflection of the traditional graft and lining of pockets of crime syndicates and patronal societies.

We might be close to the ice finally fracturing because that army is losing ground. And traditionally, we are back to nuclear threats. That is what Russia does. But this mass is very dangerous as well. If, or when, they come home, they could be part of local militias or gangs that have nothing to lose and all to gain by engaging in local terror. This is the mass that Vladimir Putin has created. So here we are, waiting for the other shoe to drop.