1/ Russia's war effort in Ukraine is still hampered by lying commanders, corrupt bureaucrats, an ineffective military-industrial complex, a lack of defences against drones, and chronic shortages of men and equipment, according to a Russian journalist and military commentator. ⬇️ 
2/ Vladislav Shurygin, an ultranationalist journalist and commentator on Russian military affairs, has written a lengthy complaint on his Telegram channel about the state of the Russian war effort. He says it is leading to massive and unnecessary losses on the Russian side.
3/ After castigating the indifference of officials and the man on the street, who he says is waiting for "'friend Trump' to give the order to end the war", he complains that "any initiative, any business drowns without a trace in the bureaucratic swamp."
4/ The average official, he says, "doesn't give a damn about anything except his own pocket, his own chair and the will of his superior ... What official in our country thinks about the country? 'Country' is something abstract."
5/ "But the office, the boss and corporate solidarity are everything!"
The Russian military's culture of lying in military reports has led to the mass slaughter of Russian soldiers, according to Shurygin.
The Russian military's culture of lying in military reports has led to the mass slaughter of Russian soldiers, according to Shurygin.
6/ "Two and a half years into the war, and at the front lies and show-offs are still blooming like opium poppies in a Tajik vegetable garden!
7/" Some "gentlemen commanders" are already receiving their third medal for the villages and townships taken on paper. And they get away with it! How many dozens of times has Krynki been declared captured and cleared of the enemy?
8/ "A full-fledged commander (let's not say which troops) personally reported to the President of Russia about its capture back in the spring. And the point is? It was only three weeks ago that fighters on the front line confirmed that the enemy is no longer in Krynki.
9/ "How many times was Robotyne "liberated"? How many times have they reported that Klishchiivka is "ours 150%"!
10/ "But the worst thing is that then, in these "taken" places of Krynki, Klishchiivka, Robotyne, hundreds of Russian men are driven forward to slaughter, so that the boss who reports the capture, who has already drilled a hole for the medal on his uniform, can cover his ass!
11/ (This problem of institutionalised lying in the Russian military is well-known and has been the cause of many failures on the battlefield - see the thread below for a longer discussion.)
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1629201232815394816
12/ Shurygin complains that "our regiments are ground down to zero in a week in senseless head-on assaults, and without any result. Because there is no electronic warfare, no drones, and the ammunition is 'limited.'
13/ "And how many regiments do we have with a full list of personnel, but as soon as the command comes to attack, to go forward, and the task is assigned to a full-blooded regiment, it suddenly turns out that a quarter of the payroll is “dead souls” [non-existent people].
14/ "Some are on the run, some have not returned from vacation, and some have generally paid their way out of the front and are safely sitting in the rear. And then there are no further miracles! The regiment is marking time, senselessly losing people and equipment.
15/ "As a result, it exposes the flanks of its more successful neighbors and, from a beautifully conceived offensive, it turns out to be a furious “offensive” with a week-long “battle for the forester’s hut” and huge losses."
16/ Ukraine's omnipresent kamikaze, reconnaissance, and long-range drones are another critical problem, which Shurygin says that Russia is failing to counter or imitate effectively.
17/ "For a whole year, drones have been keeping the infantry from raising their heads, chasing every cart in a swarm, and for a whole year we have been hearing stories from military officials that "any minute now", "soon" this problem will be solved.
18/ "But so far at the front they see "people's electronic warfare" – products made by enthusiasts – far more often than effective products of the state military-industrial complex!"
19/ (As noted in the thread below, drones produced by the military-industrial complex have often been expensive and of poor quality, while volunteer efforts to send drones to the troops fighting in Ukraine have been obstructed by the authorities.)
https://x.com/sambendett/status/1667642923515518976
20/ According to Shurygin, the Russian war effort is heavily reliant on volunteers and self-purchased supplies. He writes that "cars, motorbikes, quad bikes and other means of transport are being purchased for the front", along with many other kinds of equipment:
21/ "Up to the present moment, most of the drone detectors are bought by fighters with their own money; there is still a continuous stream of volunteer cars going to the front, carrying sights, thermal imagers, Mavic [drones], camouflage nets, first aid kits, generators and…
22/ … a whole list of desperately needed equipment to the front line. ... Even now, in folk workshops, assembly of FPVs [drones] is going on day and night."
(One such "folk workshop" is discussed by @sambendett in the thread below.)
(One such "folk workshop" is discussed by @sambendett in the thread below.)
https://x.com/sambendett/status/1743983738587845011
23/ The military-industrial complex has failed to produce the kind of drones that are actually needed, according to Shurygin, and has focused instead on producing expensive, unwanted hardware.
24/ "In twenty-nine months of war, state corporations have not created a single transport drone capable of delivering supplies to the front lines and picking up the wounded. Enthusiasts did! Even flying hexacopters! But there's no money to produce them!
25/ "But we have seen a lot of stories with clumsy, slow-moving machine-gun modules, which were obsolete in the era of [Dmitry] Rogozin's reign in the military-industrial complex, when they actually appeared! Costing many millions and needed by no one!"
26/ Shurygin laments the lack of defences against Ukrainian long-range drones, which he says have "long been the scourge of border and non-border regions, 'wrecking' oil depots and industrial facilities every day." He asks why there are no airborne early warning balloons.
27/ He also queries the lack of activity by the Russian Air Force against the long-range drone threat and the lack of protective facilities at Russian airfields, which has enabled Ukraine to destroy aircraft on the ground.
28/ "We have been saying for two years that the war requires the restoration of air defence forces, the return of fighter aviation to air defence – to no avail! The Commander-in-Chief of the Air Defence Forces is deaf!
29/ "So what about the fact that every month the number of enemy drones grows! But our Kinzhals [hypersonic missiles] are accurate and our missiles are fast!"
30/ "For two years we have been saying that our airfields need protective structures – shelters for aircraft and main airfield facilities. And what? Nothing! Are we waiting for another UAV attack on another airfield with an epic video from the AFU of burning Russian bombers?"
31/ He calls the current moment "a very dangerous point in the war," when Russia will either "mobilise and crush the enemy" or fall into "a bottomless swamp of 'truce'" due to "the weight of our systemic problems, bureaucratic sluggishness, indifference and apathy". /end
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