Can someone tell me what's going on with the Russian army? Nothing I've read truly seems to explain its epic incompetence. I mean, I know all about the maintenance issues and the logistics and the pallets and all that stuff, but Russia's operational problems go way beyond that. They seem literally unable to accomplish anything.
The longer this goes on, the more boggled I am. Is US intelligence equally boggled?
Just guessing, but maybe the troops have yet to hear a plausible reason why they should risk their lives fighting their Ukrainian cousins on Ukrainian soil. So they're very reluctant to do it.
They ran into Ukraine thinking the heavily eastern Russian side would join them. A miscalculation. Something Putin's regime has been known to do. Ukrainian military has been preparing for 8 years, Putin understood this as well, but gambled on superiority by numbers. He wants to kill the Austrian/German side Ukrainians so bad.
Time to end this and start flooding the West with Russian oil again.
I am would love for Russia to have goods on Tim con man Pool. You destroy them podcast by podcast.
The what side Ukrainians?
Those countries don't border the Ukraine.
Do not feed the troll.
Ohhhh, that's just what they WANT you to think. Where did you get your information? Ever BEEN to Ukraine, huh? Nope, you got it from MAPS! Maps you saw in SCHOOL. And WHO made the maps? WHO runs the schools? (((Cosmopolitans))) that's who! Precisely the same (((Cosmopolitans))) who are fighting against our natural ally Russia!!
It's all a HUGE conspiracy! Wake UP sheeple!!
May not quite be the genuine article, but a reasonable facsimile.
You say Cosmopolitans, I say Patriarchy.
Same nonsense, same Socialism of Fools. Both claim a shadowy cabal that has been controlling the world throughout history, often via bizarrely convoluted techniques. Both sprouting entire pseudo-science academic departments with their own ever more fantastical claims about the behavior of the Eternal Jew/Male. Both able, no matter what the actual details of any issue, to find a way in which it was/is the Jew/Patriarchy that were/are responsible.
I am aware of no more clear example of Horseshoe theory than this, the way the US modern far left has picked up right where the European far right and Moscow stopped in 1945, right up to literature and internet fantasies of how great a Male Holocaust would be.
Uhh, the left where? Citations, please.
Speaking as a Jewish male, please f*ck off.
The suggestions that "The Left" wants a "Male Holocaust" and that males have no more power in the world than Jews would both be laughable if they were not so offensive.
Looks like it's a condensed version of the wars in Chechnya. Lose first "war" by sending in tank columns without infantry support, then go back in by stand off bombardment. Turn place to rubble before sending in tank columns. (See Frontline)
Lots of different issues have been raised, and all probably contributed to their problems.
1. Grift.
2. Lack of professionalism.
3. Lack of strong NCO layer.
4. Micro-management from the Kremlin.
5. Bad intelligence--or people not willing to listen to real intelligence.
6. Trump lost.
7. Mud season.
8. Lack of total air control.
9. Risk averse, especially with airplanes (or lack of up time?).
10. Believing your own propaganda.....and it goes on....
Lots of reasons as you point out but from what I'm reading, probably the biggest is:
3) Lack of strong NCO layer.
This is organic to their army; in modern history there has never been an NCO corps.
James Stavridis:
"Another key shortcoming, which surprised me, is the lack of a strong corps of mid-grade professionals in the Russian navy crews. Called chief petty officers in the U.S. Navy, these are sailors with 10-15 years of seagoing experience who lead the sailors on the deck. They are the backbone of the U.S. Navy, and the absence of such a cadre is a major problem for the Russians. (The same weakness — a lack of strong noncommissioned officers — exists in the Russian land forces, a major factor in the problems they are encountering ashore since the Feb. 24 invasion.)
I recently compared notes on the Ukraine sea war with a retired U.S. surface-warfare captain. He reminded me that when he toured a Russian cruiser, the officers wore name tags on their uniforms, while the sailors wore only numbers. This mentality — a reminder that the Russian fleet is in part composed of conscripts — reflects a lack of a coherent chain of command. That can work in peacetime operations, but quickly breaks down in combat."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-19/russia-ukraine-war-sunken-warship-moskva-is-a-warning-to-all-navies
Another element, which the lack of strong NCOs contributes to, is the extreme hazing that exists within the Russian army. The Russians induct recruits/conscripts every six months. The longer serving enlisted personnel terrorize the more junior cohorts. It's not as bad now as it was during the Soviet era, but beatings and stealing food are common. Sexual assaults are fairly routine.
It's not a good way to build unit cohesion.
Amen to this. It's also dehumanizing in general, and probably a major reason why Russian troops are behaving the weay they do in Ukraine towards civilians.
I was in Moscow for a week a few months after the USSR was officially dissolved, and a 30-something man we became friendly with late one night over too many vodkas told us he'd basically been brutalized as a conscript. He didn't give us details and we didn't ask, but the haunted look on his face has stayed with me ever since.
These technical points are reasonable, but are they dispositive.
Specifically, were these issues, like lack of NCOs, conscripts, and hazing any different in the 30s and 40s?
If not then we cannot consider them *significant* factors in the difference between performance then and now.
As a matter of fact, the Soviets did get rid of their NCO Corps after WWII.
Now that's interesting.
Why?
The original invasion was supposed to start a year earlier. It didn't for a really good reason. Putin is aging and he couldn't wait until another friendly admin came in.
Yes, Putin was almost certainly expecting a Trump win (or steal), and must have kicked himself when it didn't happen. He held off because he didn't want to do anything that might hurt Donny's chances.
In term two, Putin would have gotten Ukraine handed to him on a platter.
Following various military analysts - actual professionals, not post-facto anointed experts - such as Phillips P Obrien, Franz-Stefan Grady, Michael Kofman: generally exactly this although (1) should be restated as high-level corruption and (2-4) can be reformulated directly as "old Soviet [itself rooted in old Tsarist habit] centralised officer-centric command doctrine" which heavily centralises. The failures of which have been seen previously also in the Arab armies modelled on the Soviet example.
Soviet command structure has long been known to be really a terrible model and Russian, unlike the Ukraine, never reformed that, whereas the Ukraine did since 2014 try to really reform its military command structure.
This on the tactical level combined with the Russians falling for their own AgitProp re Ukrainians not really having own identity and their state being fragile and illegitimate.
Ukraine itself has had similar or worse levels of corruption throughout its miltary so that is not uniquely different.
Until after 2014 when they really went all in on building a modern style military along a NATO/British model, creating an NCO layer from scratch. The Ukrainians turn out to be very fast studies.
They didn't though. They tried but the NCO core is nascent. Ukraine had major retention problems are 2014. What ended up happening is they trained a very large number of specialists who got several years of combat experience. Then these guys all came back during the invasion. So you have defacto NCOs, but the program itself wasn't really the reason.
I just saw the same point made recently, I think by a retired general? not sure who. In practice it's a small point, but it's accurate and important in terms of how the force is structured. It's also important that the Ukrainians instituted universal conscription and have been rotating every training group through the Donbas conflict area. This gives them a huge reservoir of civilians trained in the basics and with experience under fire.
Don't de-facto NCOs whether with deep experience or not create that level of operational structure intended?
You left out 11: Reading too much Chekhov. That's not entirely snark; I am in no way a military person but I get the sense the troops dispatched to Ukraine went in expecting to lose. There is something to be said for morale.
Not to mention Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, etc.
And these interact and compound one another. Combine Grift with Lack of strong NCO layer, and ordinary soldiers don't trust their leaders and are reluctant to follow them. Better to do less and try to stay alive.
Other things not on list:
Lower morale. And in the case of this war, there is an extreme mismatch for morale among Ukrainians and Russians.
Miscalculation regarding the importance of human-portable missile systems and armed drones.
The corrosive, corrupting impact of authoritarian flow down. Items 1-4 all get amplified. Institutional stupidity sets in and taints every action.
Rogan is another one. He met with Putin in 2020....Rogan was a Bush backer in the naughts. His reinvention in the 10's was a nice squirm looking for underground "cred". My guess he feared a Biden route......despite not being a Trump fan. So let's peddle dialectics.
All down to Vlad the Mad .
I suppose that works better than Poopy Pu.... never mind...
Simple. It's the eventual apotheosis of a kleptocracy: everyone is on the take, looking for a hustle...and trying to survive where nothing is done honestly and well. Everything ends up being dreck and a Potemkin sham. Same goes for a government by fear (there doesn't appear to be a word for that): everybody is ducking and weaving, double and triple thinking everything that nothing gets done...until everyone is near catatonically fearful.
Meanwhile here in America....we're not doing too well on either.
Over on Daily Kos, Kos, Mark Sumner, and a number of others have been following and commenting on this conflict extensively. In addition to lack of an NCO layer, the Russian military has a long standing tradition of being incompetent at logistics AND very corrupt from the top down.
In fact, one frequent thread of conversation is that their BTG (Battalion Tactical Group) structure is almost perfectly designed to facilitate corruption and NOT win. In theory, it is a very flexible unit designed to LOOK like a proper combined arms building block - but even "on paper" it's too small to survive much attrition before it becomes combat ineffective and needs to withdraw and regroup. And, in fact, the BTGs Russia has fielded were never up to their on paper strength even going in to combat at the start of this war. In fact WAY below strength and their equipment going in to war looked like stuff that had not had proper maintenance in months or years.
There's a lot wrong with the Russians but (and this but is one of the very biggest buts) there is so very much right with the Ukrainians.
I feel like that old saying about being hanged in a fortnight concentrating the mind applies to the Ukraine military. They knew this was coming.
That and they understand this is their chance to be fully free of Russia, their own future is in the balance, and their survival in the offing.
The common belief is that most of what the Russians print and yell is just bluster, but after the first two decades of this century and all its "counter" facts to the assumed order (9/11, fascism ascendant, turmoil in the markets, turmoil in culture, apathy towards the masses from the elites, robots doing our killing, shrugs when individuals kill many, serial plagues without serious understanding by the masses (ours at least), and the continued prominence of profit over climate), we should start believing what people say and act accordingly.
One of the things that the Ukrainians have done right, to refer to the comment thread above, is that they broke with the Soviet tradition of a lack of professional NCOs. Partially under NATO guidance and partially on their own, they thoroughly restructured their forces to look more like what exists in the rest of Europe.
Je suis d'accord.
In a word: HUBRIS.
Do you remember the lead up to the 1990 Gulf War? US military planners were expecting a very difficult, long war that would be costly in lives and equipment. Bush addressed Americans in a serious tone about the risks and explained why we had to go to war.
The media was talking about the possibility of a draft and explained how it worked during Vietnam. There was almost a fatalism in the air, that a draft was going to come.
The build-up of forces took months. The anxiety kept building as the US and its allies positioned its force in preparation for the start.
And then what happened once the fighting started just blew away everyone's expectations.
That happened because the folks in charge were under zero illusions of the scope of the task Bush had given them, and had spent a very long time coordinating and planning this war, prepared for the worst.
That's not what Russia did. Russia fell for its own hubris and they continue to fall for it, even now.
Russia's fallback is still its primary, just slightly downsized. They're still deployed and operating to fight a land war with tanks, even as they're being picked apart by drones and an ever-growing stash of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
One advantage that the U.S. Army has when it comes to planning is that we are separated by oceans from everywhere we've fought for the last century. It means that the army can't ignore logistics the way so many other militaries do. Nothing concentrates the mind on supply issues like the necessity of putting everything you intend to use on a boat .
And then came the invasion and occupation of Iraq under Bush II, and what did we get? Terrible intelligence driven by political demands, a top-down military strategy predicated on complete misunderstanding of the political and cultural realities of Iraq and one long slog of BS and violent deaths, mostly of Iraqis. Kind of shows how quickly things can change under different leadership.
The ground campaign in Desert Storm was evidence, in a backward sort of way, in support of the old adage that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy". In that case, the battle plan didn't survive because there was no battle. US and coalition troops attacked, fully expecting to fight, and the enemy promptly surrendered. The fancy battle plan was just of no use at all.
As already stated by others, corruption is a big part of it. But so is abuse. The Russian military is an absolute cesspit of physical, economic, and sexual abuse; it's basically like a bad prison, where everyone is either a thug or a victim. The conscripts tend to be victims, and they are the ones who handle logistics, hence why Russian logistics have been so catastrophically bad, because abuse is terrible for morale and cohesion. A lot of people would think that this would toughen people up and hence increase military effectiveness, but it does the exact opposite.
Machismo is not how you create an effective military. You create an effective military with discipline. And the Russian military has no real discipline.
Yes
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/02/17/decade-after-military-reform-hazing-plagues-russian-army-a69309
Kevin,
I recommend this recent episode of the War on the Rocks podcast, where Michael Koffman delves into Russian force structure and how that led them into a war where they don't have enough infantry to achieve their goals.
https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/ukraines-military-advantage-and-russias-stark-choices/
The other parts of the puzzle is that the Russian army is fundamentally a conscript army, and by declaring a "special military operation" Putin has not had to put the country on a war footing--i.e. engage in widespread conscription. There's also the issue that the Russian army and the Soviet army before it have never had a robust NCO corps, so it's top heavy, tightly controlled, and unable to adjust quickly to conditions on the ground.
And the Tsarist before it.
Very difficult to change deep cultural patterns. Not impossible but very, very difficult.
The NCO layer, poor morale, Russia's historic loss of men ("no bullets? throw men!") etc all play a role. But why have such an epically inept army despite a modernization campaign?
Consider Putin is afraid. If there is a competent military - with competent leaders - they could be an internal threat to Putin. Along with the authoritarian streak of "suck up to great leader" you don't get leaders but toadies, and people with sucking-up skills instead of military skills. Imagine what the US military would be like after 20 years of Trump...
The result is that the Russian military is a Potemkin by design. Impressive on paper, but paper thin.
(Probably some epic Dunning-Kruger going on as well. )
Even a paper tiger with lots of bombs can do a lot of damage...
There was talk that the army could collapse around nowish a few weeks ago. Looks like the Russians were able to shore things up a bit--at least pulling back from Kyiv has left them less vulnerable. But they still can not make major offensives.
Unfair to Grigory Potemkin, an extremely effective and ruthless military and civilian satrap of Ukraine. He was one of Catherine's many lovers - but the brainless studs did not get promoted to high office.
Maybe you could say the same about the US armed forces. Why weren't Vietnam and Afghanistan pushovers? If the military or quasi-military of the county invaded do not play the game and surrender to supposedly overwhelming force, and are supported by at least part of the population, resistance can go on for a long time.
There is something to that line of thought. If WWII style tactics and strategy was applied in both places, the borders of this world would be different. And the cost we apply and the results we obtain don't line up, but done of the results we desire are intangible...
*some of the results
Ahh, but what were the goals?
You can win battles and lose wars.
Historically speaking Ukraine has always seen itself as an independent entity …trying to make deals with the myriad of invading forces..in order to survive….we’re talking about the Mongolian horde..the Vikings..on and on…the Cossacks had a fundamental disagreement with the tsar. The tsar thought joining forces with Ukraine meant they became part of mother Russia…the Cossacks considered it only transactional. Putin too has misread this fact. I think it’s the function of hundreds of years of 2 sides at cross purposes with each other. Putin erroneously believes you can bludgeon people into submission. The long and bloody history of Ukraine belies that assumption.
Russia is a petro-state, with all that it implies. Their military is every bit the showy, paper-tiger designed for parades or rolling over much smaller, poorer nations on its immediate borders.
Comparing it with Saudi Arabia is unfair because the wealth is shared among all Saudi Arabian male citizens in good standing. The government under King Salman Saud is a direct dictatorship but the economy is socialist in weird ways. We can argue about that system separately for all the troubles it causes. In Russia, Putin owns everything, directly or indirectly, and any wealth created independently by citizens is "shared" upwards under threat of force.
So, everything in Russia is hollow. Lacking substance below the surface level because money is made by skimming budgets, positions are held by friends, family, and people who look like they are out of central casting, and the only goal is to impress Putin via the channels of kleptocrats he uses to manage things.
That especially includes the military, a major budget item and government operation. Officers from connected families or by patronage, past military experience called for intense but imprecise artillery on small targets or unprofessional brutality against civilian populations. No developed experience or expertise and a polished-and-shine parade-ground military only.
What has surprised me most is Russia’s failure to achieve air supremacy. The explanations regarding their failures on the ground that I’ve read here and elsewhere sound logical to me but don’t explain their inability to control the skies. I was expecting that to occur almost immediately. Everything I’ve ever read about the Russian Air Force led me to believe it was well equipped with aircraft that was modern and that it’s pilots were among the best in the world. I guess I was reading the wrong stuff.
I agree…it’s really strange….but my hunch is that Ukrainians are getting excellent support and that Javelins are very effective.
Javelins are anti-armor, not anti-aircraft.
Stingers in the air, Javelins for the ground...though I guess they'll fire whatever they have onto any target they can get a lock on if needed.
The Javelins are especially good since it also gives troops "night vision" (sees infra-red, aka heat, signatures if I recall correctly).
Corruption going down the line from Putin down to the lowest ranks. Putin is really the capo di tutti capi at the top of a chain of kleptocrats - he didn't get his huge country estate or that big yacht on his official salary. The other oligarchs get to pocket a lot of money that SHOULD go to buying equipment and supplies. It rolls down the line to the level of trading a few gallons of fuel or some stolen ration packets (long past use-by date) for a bottle of vodka. Why pay to maintain equipment when you can pocket the money that should have gone into replacement and spare parts (or into the pockets of enough mechanics to actually do proper maintenance). I suspect that a fair number of soldiers and a LOT of equipment are as fictional as the equipment and spares inventory and maintenance logs as well.
At least with land vehicles you can walk away from them when they break down or run out of fuel because the tankers also broke down a while back. Aircraft breaking down in mid-air because of poor maintenance is a bit trickier to handle gracefully.
Just as a comparison, the United States military looked very dominant in Grenada, Panama, and the first gulf war. It also looked dominant for the first several months in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But then things got harder and the US military didn't look so dominant anymore. I think part of the answer is that Georgia and Crimea were like Russia's Grenada and Panama. Grossly overmatched opponents who were easy to defeat. Those victories gave Russian leaders an inflated sense of their militaries capabilities. There's much more to what is going on, but I think this is a big part of why we find it surprising that Russia is struggling.
I was expecting Russian dominance in the first few months and a Ukrainian insurgency much like what we faced in Iraq. The really unexpected thing was Russias failure to dominate the battlefield and control the skies. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if our attack on Baghdad had been repulsed and pushed back and our Air Force was unable to fly effectively.
The US Military was dominant in Afghan and Iraq. The problem is that they were working for incompetents like Bush and Cheney who appointed more incompetents to try and run an occupation government and didn't have clue one about how to do that.
I forget who said it, but shortly after the US went in to Afghanistan and then pivoted to Iraq, someone wrote that you only have a short time after winning the military campaign to show that you can actually GOVERN competently. The US blew that task spectacularly.
In Iraq the US blew the task spectacularly and consistently for the entire 20 years we were there. Check out the SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) reports - issued every 2 years for the duration - all of them variations on "we don't know what we're doing, and we don't learn from our failures".
Oops - In Afghanistan the US blew the task ...
You imply that the US could have had "occupation governments" in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan without having major guerilla warfare against the US. I'm surprised we were ever able to occupy Iraq at all. And the fact that we transitioned to an Iraqi government system that is at least nominally democratic is an accomplishment. Yes, the quality of government is crappy, and there is corruption and institutional weaknesses everywhere. So in hindsight we could have prevented that from happening? I think not.
The Soviet and Russian Armies have been falsely built up as threats to US national security in order to justify humongous war complex expenditures. Americans have believed the propaganda and submitted to wealth transfers that should have funded universal healthcare and other social goods. Russians also do not target civilians like the US military does in order to achieve military objectives with the least American casualties. America's military would have killed everyone at the Avostal plant with weapons like white phosphorus, as they did at Fallujah, and characterized the dead as combatants.
Seems wrong.
China is nearly always cited as the big "justifies spending a gazillion dollars on the Pentagon" threat these days, not Russia. Rightly so (it's a vastly more dangerous adversary than Russia).
The 'missile gap' was a ploy to increase American war complex expenditures in the Sixties to supposedly match Soviet capacity and hypersonic weapons and rail guns developed by China are used in the same way now to justify wasteful expenditures.
US military spending overall, as a percentage of GDP, has been declining for decades. Perhaps you think that spending 3.7% of GDP per year on defense is too much, but I don't. The US is still the bulwark against the threat of the autocratic onslaught.
"Russians also do not target civilians like the US military does . . ."
LOL! You obviously don't know what you're posting about.
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/04/22/1094234731/possible-mass-graves-near-mariupol-shown-in-satellite-images#:~:text=The%20grave%20is%20located%20just,hold%20up%20to%209%2C000%20bodies.
Why yes, Russians do not target civilians like the US military does, as the US and other militaries try not to while Russians have no bones about it at all (see Syria, see Georgia, see Chechnia for post Soviet examples).
Amusing (of course the weirdo spin here is just silly as (1) you obviously don't know the Avostal steel complex is not a single plant but a huge complex (2) the Russians have been already filmed using phosporous on targets in Kharkhiv, etc).
Russia allowed civilians to exit Avostal and other locations, a policy the US refused in Fallujah, where white phosphorus bombs were used against them.
A policy that what in Fallujah?
Your statement is the opposite of what was observed.
Well, the Russians seem to be quite adept at producing large piles of civilian-covering rubble...
And the Russians were claiming there were mass graves of Russian speakers in Ukraine--and now there are.
Let's remember the Ukraine famines in the 1930's was basically due to Russia needing equipment as the great depression stopped trade/production for their industrial dreams.. The real reason America's capital stopped flowing in(sorry Fred Koch). This killed 3+ million Ukrainians , some which were of Russian descent. So Russians now heavily moved into eastern Ukraine after the war. Its something I didn't completely understand to this war.
Putin thought those guys were just going to flock to him.
Whatever the problems with their military, utterly abysmal intel seems to have massively intensified its shortcomings. Did really nobody on the Russian side know they were likely to get mauled, and/or did nobody warn Putin?
Kamil Galeev's many twitter threads make up the single best source I've seen for understanding the culture and practices of the Russian state and military. He's very cynical in the Russian style (of course), which makes for easy reading (especially if you voice it to yourself with a Russian accent!), and he makes unexpected and unexpectedly deep linkages within current Russian culture and with the Soviet and Tsarist periods.
On the military and domestic Ukrainian side I've been particularly relying on Phillips O'Brien, Jimmy SecUK, Nathan Ruser, Ilia Ponomarenko, Kevin Rothrock, and a few others they'll link to from time to time. But for overall depth on Russia, check Galeev. Twitter handle @kamilkazani. Eventually he says he'll convert the threads into substack entries but hasn't really gotten to that stage yet.
Can it be a bad Russian accent? I am thinking Alan Arkin in The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming!
Bad can be better, why not? Boris Badunov? I'm not actually sure what accent I'm reading in, maybe something like the Ilya Kuryakin one from the old tv show? That wasn't very Russian when you get down to it, but it doesn't slow me down much. If I could imitate Kasparov's accent I'd subvocalize with that one because he goes at a blue streak. But I can't do his, at least not yet. Maybe some day I'll catch an interview with Galeev and try to be authentic.
Is US intelligence as amazed at what Russia's doing wrong as everyone else? That's a good question, and I think I'd go with 75% yes, they *still* can't believe what they're seeing.
Trent Telenko thinks it's because they're all a bunch of insulated toffs who don't know enough to look where the rubber meets the road-- the actual nuts-and-bolts of how you get armies and equipment into the field and keep them there. I only agree partially with that.
To me, a really big reason our intel people have a hard time crediting what they're seeing in front of them is a fundamental career mind-set-- when they look across borders at Russian analysts, they see fellow professionals. By definition, those fellow professionals see the world, politics, geopolitical balances, force structures, deployments, all that stuff, in the same terms they themselves do. In many cases they know them personally from conferences, and they use the same terms and everything when they talk to each other as fellow professionals. So ours keep waiting for that professionalism to show up-- it's got to happen, any day now, really!
The same thing can happen with our military-- all the major militaries visit and observe each other and have personal connections. General Hertling seems to have resisted that temptation, because at the very start of the war he was saying the Russians couldn't do what they planned. But I wonder what he was telling our people back when he was doing the visiting and meeting, and I wonder about the others.
Also, there's this: the Russians have a ton of nukes. You have to start by respecting that fact, and once you grant that, you might tend to think there's more capability in everything else than what you see in front of you at any one time.
Yes, lots of reasons, well stated above. Invaders are prone to low morale to begin with, and when the war turns out not to be a cakewalk, morale decreases further.
But one other factor is interesting because it seems to be endemic to dictatorships. The maximum leader brooks no dissent, and therefore surrounds himself with people who will tell him exactly what he wants to hear. As a result, Putin is dissociated from reality, and is incapable of making informed decisions. An indelible image from the current situation is Putin sitting at the head of a long table while his distant "advisers" at the other end were just there for show. Comic if not so tragic.
Ego-driven dictatorships and police states tend to be incompetent. A point that I was first exposed to many years ago while watching Woody Allen's comic dystopia "Sleeper".
I recently listened to a podcast about Tsar Nicholas II, which included the observation that someone could only stay sane as a tsar for about ten years. After that the isolation from reality pretty much removed the possibility of rational decision making.
Fairly simple:
Russian armed forces have been looted from the inside.
Ukraine is no threat to Russia, so young, poorly trained Russian troops are not motivated to fight.
Putin greatly underestimated the Ukraine ability to resist.
Start with Chayanov's The Theory of Peasant Economy and Kipling's The Truce of the Bear. Russia is a land of strong men and peasants. Modern warfare is no longer just for the elite and it helps a lot if the non-elite needed for the fight are citizens rather than serfs. The Romans knew this with their relatively flat legion based armies fighting against more authoritarian phalanx armies full of peasants.
By the time wars started used rifles, cannon and explosives, a peasant army was at a disadvantage. Peasants are taught early that they shouldn't try too hard. The ceiling is too strong for them, so they never really become independent thinkers able to act or machine people who care about capital equipment. When Alexander II freed the serfs, it was in hopes of improving the quality of the men in his army. He sold Alaska to compensate the nobility. How did it work out? Moderately well, but Russia still doesn't have a modern army. As others have pointed out, Peter the Great went to the west to learn shipbuilding, not parliamentary democracy.
As for Kipling. It's just good advice.
It's Tommy this and Tommy that ...
Here's what I see: some US military people have been talking to journalists (and some people have been yelling at them for that) regarding the extent of the US intelligence provided to the Ukrainian. It seems silly that they would be broadcasting this, but they have, to the NY Times and Wash Post.
If you have good intelligence, you can through a mighty wrench in the operations. I think the officials are talking because Biden would like to get some of the credit for the lack of success of the Russian operation. Logistics seem to be a target-rich environment for the Ukrainian (we remember that convoy that was stuck on the road that was open to be hit).
So knowing when a naval ship has its radars down and knowing its location is pretty helpful if you want to sink it. Maybe the Ukrainian would know all this without help. But again, some US mil officials are trying to get the credit at the risk of tipping their hand.
Well, Boris has been bragging about what the Brits are doing, so....
Biden is mad about these disclosures because they hurt what we are trying to do and are probably not that accurate. We are not pinpointing the exact location of Russian generals in real time for the Ukrainians. The fact that the Russians are using unsecured cell phones does the trick nicely.
So of the leaks sound like jealousy. "The Ukrainians are getting all the credit for defending the homeland." Some of it comes across as lashing out at critics who say we're not doing enough. "Oh yeah, well we did all this...so there!" But that's not Biden's policy. Maybe defense contractors are looking for more money? "Look how good we're doing in Ukraine".
Boris is behaving badly because he thinks credit for helping Ukraine helps him at home. Biden has always been way more circumspect, though his anger at Putin does show through. The Ukrainians themselves have done a good job of giving the US credit for support--but don't reveal specifics.
It seems silly that they would be broadcasting this, but they have, to the NY Times and Wash Post.
Biden by all accounts cussed up a blue streak chewing out the military intel people for this very offense.
(As a side note: it's hard to imagine Trump even comprehending what's problematic about such leaks, much less excoriating the brass for engaging in them.)
In case you haven't seen it, here is an excellent introduction to the Russian mindset, by a retired Finnish intelligence colonel. It is from a lecture in 2018, in Finnish with English subtitles, or there is a version dubbed in English if you prefer. Strongly recommended!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw
Kevin, LONG time reader and fan here. I think I can contribute on this, but could you possibly be a bit more specific about what element of the Russian plan you are inquiring about? Without some specificity, one could write many pages on this topic. For example, you can say something like: Why is Russia exposing its capital ships to being sunk?
But very big picture, I would simply say that through quirks of history, accidents and other factors, the U.S. and some subset of its allies, have developed integrated and sophisticated militaries. "Integrated" is the key word here, as one's military is only as good as the weakest link that can be attacked by an adversary. You could roughly categorize these militaries as being "extremely capable." In comparison, Russian's military is probably one or 2 notches below and is "capable." Ukraine's could also be described as "capable" but with different strengths and weaknesses compared to Russia's. When coupled with U.S./European intelligence, Ukraine's military probably goes up one notch to "very competent" but is still smaller than Russia's. That puts Ukraine on approximate parity with Russia's. As with any competitive dynamic involving human beings and their institutions, slight differences in capabilities can have large consequences in competitive outcomes.
Just my 2 cents.
All of the above, plus that it's very hard to invade a country where EVERYONE opposes you. The US in Iraq and Afghanistan, the French in Africa, the Russians in Syria, all had at least some support from the people and/or the local government. Putin's forces in Ukraine ran up against an unexpected wall, except in the eastern part of the country and even there the support they get is a fraction of what they expected.
Of all the impressive things the Ukrainians have done, it's their shoulder-to-shoulder stance that stands out most.
Has anyone seen information on what became of any pro-Russian sentiment especially in the eastern regions? I presume some have stayed with the Russians, but it seems like most pro-Russian sentiment collapsed in the wake of the invasion? Were Dombas anti-Ukraine forces always primarily Russian, or does there remain a substantial real domestic pro-Russian cohort?