Russia’s Military Knows
…and they’ve known all along.
But the question is, does Putin know?
It’s painfully obvious after two plus years of war in Ukraine and the complete lack of real advancement and success on the part of Russian forces there that, for anyone paying attention, Russia isn’t now, nor ever really was, the number two militarily strong country on Earth. Yeah, I get it, a lot of folks (If the rubbish some here on Medium are spouting is any indication.) still don’t get that last part, but just a modicum of thinking is enough for the lightbulb to pop on if you’re paying attention.
Really, think about it. What is the one thing we KNOW Russia is good at? Psyops. Pushing misinformation, dissension, division, and lies into the social consciousness of other countries, even to the point of causing their governments to be fooled. Heck, they’ve been doing this at least since WWII! That’s a lot of experience, and a pretty good record of success.
Why do I say that?
Simple, as I’ve mentioned before, take a look at history. Specifically, World War Two. I was looking at an article the other day that outlined a story near the beginning of the USSR’s involvement in the war against Germany where Stalin was in shock at his army losing over a HUNDRED divisions! Yep, that’s a bunch.
But in the end, he managed to turn that around so that by the end in 1945, the USSR managed to not only take half of Germany but the Eastern half of Europe, too! How did he do that?
With Allied help. Not just help, but the majority of their logistics and equipment came from the Allies, otherwise, the Germans would have destroyed the USSR, and who knows how that would have affected the Allies’ efforts? Which of course, is why they did it. Not that they gave a flip about Russia per se. It was just easier to fight an enemy whose attention was divided between two fronts.
But the point is, the Germans had so badly affected the USSR’s industry, they had to break up the bigger factories into smaller units that could (and were) moved from place to place to foil German efforts to bomb those factories. That cut back severely on their output.
The end of the war didn’t help much. They’d lost so many people, and their industries had so few truly effective and knowledgeable employees, it literally took them decades to get on their feet. Of course, part of that was the bigger population they had inside the Eastern European captive nations that assisted them in this, too.
But they applied their psyops efforts into making everyone think they were doing “just fine,” and moving on, that their military was growing fast. But really, those psyops efforts bore fruit — by the 60’s, and the growth of the nuclear standoff, the entire world thought they were indeed, number two in being the strongest country in the world.
Including the US.
Then came the 90’s, and the fall of the USSR and the resulting Russian “Federation”. The population was cut severely, as was their access to industry. But the kicker?
Russia’s new oligarchy.
See Wikipedia:
Oligarchy (from Ancient Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía) ‘rule by few’; from ὀλίγος (olígos) ‘few’, and ἄρχω (árkhō) ‘to rule, command’)[1][2][3] is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.
Throughout history, power structures considered to be oligarchies have often been viewed as coercive, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, contrasting it with aristocracy, arguing that oligarchy was the perverted form of aristocracy.[4]
As we’ve seen repeatedly in modern times, one of the defining characteristics of an oligarchy is corruption. When the richest people in a country have unfettered and complete control over a country and its economy, the entire wealth of that country tends to move upwards into that ruling class’ hands. But along with that comes corruption of the lower levels of power. All of the successively lower ranks within that power structure take their cut, so by the time you get to the people outside of that structure, what’s left is the dregs.
And so it is in Russia. First, Putin takes his. Then he awards the next levels of power below him as fellow oligarchs, and so that continues, until at the lowest levels, they’re left with selling whatever they can on the black market. The folks left over get whatever the oligarchs don’t want.
The result is a society of corruption. Nothing gets done without the accompanying corrupt payments. This means that the entire military budget gets pared down to (I’ve seen estimates.) what is around half of that “appropriated” by the top levels. This means fewer goods and services, and in the military, equipment gets stolen and resold, parts do too, almost anything, so that by the time the logistics trains get to the front in Ukraine, it’s just barely enough, if that.
And Russia’s nukes? As the US knows, nukes are expensive to build and also to maintain. That takes constant care and maintenance, and periodically, certain parts of the conventional explosives that make them work have to be replaced, as does some of that nuclear stuff, too. And we haven’t even talked about the delivery systems!
That takes money, and trained experts to do that maintenance. How much of that cash gets down to the people doing the buying of those expensive elements not obtainable inside Russia? How much do THEY steal?
And how many of those trained experts remain assigned to the nukes instead of getting reassigned to the Ukrainian front?
That leave two questions. How many of those nukes can be delivered to a target and second, how many of them are in condition to actually work when they arrive?
Well, I for damn sure don’t know, you probably don’t, either, and in fact, there’s only one group of people who truly do.
The Russian military.
But that, of course, begs one question.
Is Putin one of those who truly knows, or is he on the “don’t dare tell him the truth” list? Don’t forget, Russia is a death zone for people who tell Putin things he doesn’t want to know. Tall buildings are a weapon, you know. I’d bet money that the top military folks are among those who wouldn’t dare to tell Putin his treasured nukes aren’t exactly in top shape, and let’s not go into making sure he’s up to date on the casualty figures in Ukraine, or how much the replacement numbers for logistics and equipment have slipped!
That’s a death wish, doing that.
So, yeah, Putin himself may indeed be making “plans” to invade NATO, or the Baltic countries (Which is the same thing.), or engaging China over those Eastern Oblasts they covet so much. But in reality, the military knows the truth.
None of that is possible. It isn’t, because Russia is not the second most powerful country on this globe. It isn’t even in the top ten, even with its nukes, and their military commanders know it.
What happens when Putin decides that he needs a diversion from Ukraine? Something to distract NATO, and pull their attention away from Ukraine? He makes his plans and starts pushing the ideas at the military top guys. What happens?
He’s got days, or maybe weeks, to live, that’s what. Why? Because they’re aware they cannot accomplish what he wants, and people who fail Putin disappear. Obviously, high ranking military folks do not want to disappear, or get assigned to the front lines in Ukraine.
So, they will engineer his death.
Which will happen anyway if it becomes clear to them that the Ukrainian troops are about to fail, if they have any warning of that, too. They’re aware that such a collapse would mean the likely end of the Russian Federation, and for them, too, so they’ll try to manage that as best as they can.
Desperation breeds its own style of “optimism.”
Of course, a guy like me cannot hope to predict what will happen. I can only speculate based on what I see and read. But logic dictates reality. So while I cannot say what those top uniformed fellows might do or plan for, I can guarantee that they DO have plans.
You cannot be in charge of the kind of clusterfuck they’ve got in Ukraine without being aware of the shortcomings and the likely outcomes — most of these people have been in uniform for decades, and they know their systems and their troops better than anyone. And if there’s anything, as military officers, they do know, it is the old saw about no plan surviving contact with the enemy. So, they’ll do what anyone else would do — make multiple plans for differing scenarios so they’ll be ready.
Even if those plans include a small aircraft and a fake passport.
It’s anyone’s guess how this will “end”. The troops in Ukraine may just one day run out of ammo, certainly in one small area, and the resulting panic and retreat could just result in Ukrainian troops taking back a nice chunk of territory.
Or that panic could spread, causing a wider panic, which may or may not be limited in scope — or it could just end up with the entire front collapsing over several days. That, in turn, could result in an internal fight between factions (including the military), or it could result in the complete collapse of the entire Russian Federation.
Or it could just mean the Ukrainians have an easier fight ahead of them against a disorganized and under-supplied enemy who can’t get themselves together enough to stop retreating.
Your guess is as good as mine.
But I do know one thing, and that is that if there is one group of people who know what Russia is capable of, it has to be the top military commanders.
If you see them running, be prepared.
