Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Russian commanders are robbing and deliberately killing their men, forcing female subordinates into sex and engaging in corruption with impunity, due to attitudes in the Russian army that a Russian commentator says are unchanged since the 19th century. ⬇️

2/ Over the past three years of war in Ukraine, abuses by Russian officers have frequently been reported. Dissent is often punished by sending the culprits to die in unsupported assaults (an approach nicknamed Puzikism, after one particularly notorious commander).

3/ Theft from subordinates is commonplace, with men imprisoned under false pretences, made to pay bribes to be released, or sometimes even murdered.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1857175070197637319

4/ There have also been repeated reports of sexual exploitation of female soldiers, with commanders reviving the World War Two practice of taking "field wives".

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1647674534475038721

5/ Commenting on a video by military expert Maxim Klimov, the 'Playing Civilization' Telegram channel says that because of the army's problems with a large number of desertions, "a decision was made 'not to interfere with the commanders', which resulted in mass arbitrariness,…

6/ …including in extreme forms, a la Puzik.

Here we actually see a repetition of the mechanism of the notorious Stalinist repressions in a mild version.

How was it then and how is it now?

7/ "In conditions when there is no management mechanism as such, when there are no established feedback "to the top", there is no separate military code of laws regulating crimes of military personnel against military service, there is no mechanism for …

8/ … "checking the inspectors", the authorities have only one tool left - to give the performers absolute power and hold them responsible for achieving the result.

9/ "The difference is that now the task is not to carry out repressions "by squares", and therefore we do not flinch at the sound of an engine outside the window.

10/ "In Russia of the 21st century, this method has taken ugly forms due to the fact that impunity of incompetent leaders has become one of the "staples" of the political system - not always, but as a rule, a responsible leader is not punished for a mess of some case.

11/ "This is the wrong way, and it always ends the same - some of the leadership positions are filled by people described by the #BrainWork tag (and they, as we remember, have an advantage in their careers, since in the conditions of the existence of a "culture of impunity"…

12/ …they do not have to work) and begin to solve their "issues" due to absolute power over people. Any issues, often financial, sometimes sexual.

13/ "Seizure of property, inducement of female servicemen to cohabitation, extortion of money - all under the threat of execution, if it was the end of the 30s or the Great Patriotic War, or "zeroing out" if it was the Special Military Operation.

14/ "During the Great Patriotic War, there were very timid and weak attempts to create an institution of governance, which is why the country had the State Defence Committee, the Headquarters and the institution of its representatives, as well as the party control circuit with…

15/ …members of military councils. All this worked very poorly and rarely, but at least the authorities tried to curb the monsters they had created.

16/ "Now, when the country is ruled by people whose mentality relates to the early 19th century and who are incapable of rising above the methods of governance of that time (feudal in essence), and the upper level of military command is overflowing...

17/ ...with a contingent that should not wear shoulder straps even for medical reasons, no special measures are being taken to curb people who previously received absolute power - the special services and the military prosecutor's office work with them in the normal mode,...

18/ ...with the corresponding effectiveness (see the Puzik cases).

It turns out to be about the same as in the Great Patriotic War, apparently.

19/ "Sometimes especially harmful people without a "roof" [protection from a senior] are removed from office, even more rarely arrested, but this is a statistical error. Those who have a "roof" cannot be touched - in a feudal society, the law is not written for everyone.

20/ "We have become hostages of the lack of legal institutions of governance, the inability of the highest military-political leadership to understand that such can exist in principle and...

21/ ...the inclination of the first person [Putin] to the management methods of 200 years ago, adequate in the agrarian Russia of 1825, but not now.

22/ "This does not mean that the situation is hopeless, but it does mean that it will take a very long time to eliminate it, under silent pressure from below, and due to the degeneration of the command system due to the washout of old personnel for biological reasons.

23/ "These processes are underway, and Maxim also talks about this, but it is still a long way from the transition from quantity to quality.

24/ "This transition will not be felt any time soon, and all the time we are moving towards it, we will have to endure huge unnecessary losses, knowing that they could easily have been prevented if at some point other people had been at the top of the decision-making system.

25/ "It is sad, but you do not choose your times, you live and die in them. This too will end, just not soon.

Let us continue to watch the course of events." /end

Source:
t.me/playcivilizati…