Russia’s Military Incompetence is Getting Even Worse...

Once upon a time, the Russian military was supposed to be the second most powerful on Earth.Today, the Russian military isn't even the most powerful military in Ukraine.From the start of Russia's full -scale invasion in 2022, the nation's armed forces have been subjected to a strange humiliation ritual, partly because of the cunning and innovation of their Ukrainian rivals, but partly because of the sheer, bumbling idiocy of their own commanding officers.Make no mistake, Ukraine would never have held out this long if not for the bravery and tenacity of its armed forces.But Russia's consistent ability to find its way into new and catastrophic blunders also doesn't hurt.As painful as the last several years have been for the Russian military, the situation has deteriorated even further in 2026.

Russia is losing troops at an unprecedented rate, expending more lives, more munitions, and more state wealth, even as they capture less and less territory each month.Its battlefield commanders are making increasingly poor decisions, and they're openly lying to their higher -ups when their attacks inevitably fall apart.In the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and his inner circle are being fed a constant stream of false victories, when, on the front lines, Russia's spring and summer offensive has fallen flat on its face.But however incompetent the Russian military might seem, the reality is even worse.Because underneath Ukrainian victories, and underneath obvious blunders by Moscow, the Russian military has built a hidden, corrupt machine where every battlefield catastrophe puts rubles into Russians' pockets.At the very top of today's episode, we've got to start with the caveat about the Russian Armed Forces that, despite the beating Moscow has taken in Ukraine, and despite all the many problems we're about to discuss, we're not here to claim that the Russian military is just a single, stiff breeze away from total collapse.

As at the time of writing, Russian forward progress on the battlefield has basically halted in an overall sense.But Russia is still pushing forward in some areas, just as it is being pushed back in others.Instead, we'd actually like to draw your attention to the opposite point.Even after all that Ukraine has accomplished in this war, and even after all the potential that Moscow has thrown away, the Russian military still stands.At times, it seems to be standing in spite itself.

But it stands, nevertheless.We point that out partly because we'd like to keep some realistic expectations around this discussion, but also because we should keep that fact in mind every time our conversation turns toward corruption.

The graft and exploitation we're going to describe today isn't an accident.It exists because of the war in Ukraine.It feeds off the war in Ukraine.And the people who benefit most from the exploitation are the same people with the greatest incentives to ensure that the war continues, even after any honest outside appraisal would suggest that Russian gains aren't even close to being worth the cost.But let's begin this tour de force of Russian incompetence with the problems that have been bestowed upon Moscow by its enemies in Kiev, starting with the Russian Spring and Summer Offensive.

Just a few short months ago, Russia was moving assets into position for what was intended to be a major push, centred on the city of Slovyansk, in the partially occupied Donetsk Blast.Taking Sloviansk wasn't going to be easy for the Russians.To get there, they would first have to take the city of Lyman, in an intense urban battle similar to what happened in Pokrovsk from 2024 until early this year.

Then, to capture Sloviansk, they would have had to win an even bigger urban battle, while simultaneously drawing Ukraine's attention elsewhere by pressing a series of secondary offensives.Capture Slovyansk and Russia would have captured the northern anchor point of Ukraine's vaunted fortress belt, a multi -layered structure of defensive fortifications that Ukraine absolutely must hold against Russian capture.But even before there was time for the spring offensive to get underway, Ukraine revealed what's turned out to be a decisive advantage.A new arsenal of mid -range drones, including an American -made model called the Hornet, plus the tactical advances to use those drones effectively.Dubbed the Martian II by Russian soldiers, the Hornet is piloted partially by Artificial Intelligence, and it's completely impervious to Russian jamming because it navigates by using that AI to read the terrain.

visually, instead of relying on GPS or remote control.

The onboard AI can identify targets, and even handle the final kill process all by itself, flying at a range of over 100km.They're practically silent until just before impact, they're extremely cheap, and they'd been used by Ukraine less to target Russian troops at the front, and more to target the staging operations that would have created the foundation of a successful offensive.

Russian forces have been unable to protect their ammunition stockpiles, their fuel trucks, or their encampments and training grounds away from the front lines.Nor is the Hornet the only drone in Ukraine's arsenal.Recently, Ukraine's 412th Nemesis Brigade unveiled the Morrigan, another mid -range strike drone that's optimised to operate significantly behind enemy lines.

Those drones have allowed Ukraine to completely defuse the spring offensive before it ever really got going.Even more important, Ukraine has achieved those results without putting its soldiers at greater risk.Ukraine's forces are chronically undermanned and perpetually exhausted, and Kiev does not have the ability to go head -to -head with the full strength of a Russian offensive in any one area.But instead, it's completely destroyed the infrastructure Russia needed to create an offensive that wouldn't collapse under its own weight.As a result, Russian forces near the front are badly isolated, cut off from easy reinforcement and resupply, while the bulk of the killing takes place away from the front lines, where Russian troops naturally have their guard down.Ukraine has even expanded its strikes to target the highway network leading across occupied territory and into Crimea, where the impact of Ukraine's bombardment has gotten so bad that the entire region is on the brink of economic collapse.

Fuel trucks, trains and even ferries are unable to reach Crimea, the existing fuel storage infrastructure there has been destroyed, and the problem is only getting worse with fuel shortages now starting to spread across the Donbass.According to the latest frontline reports, mobile drone defence teams are now at risk of running out of fuel, a crisis that would clear the way for even deeper Ukrainian strikes.Better yet for Ukraine, targeting efficiency is improving constantly, to the point thatit now takes only a few minutes for Ukrainian forces to spot a new moving target, get a drone on site, and destroy it.But we've really got to emphasize here that Ukraine's new drone designs and tactics have been so successful because of Russia's inability to cope.Over the last several years, Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a cycle of mutual innovation, with one side working out new solutions to battlefield problems and gaining a temporary advantage, until the other side counters with innovations of their own.

This time, however, Russia hasn't been able to innovate a solution to the new problems Ukraine has posed.

Kiev's AI -enabled drones can be shot down using directed energy weapons, dedicated interceptor drones, or conventional firearms operated by an overwhelming mass of patrol troops.

But Russia hasn't been able to develop directed energy weapons, it's not distributing appropriate interceptor drones to the front, and instead of keeping enough troops in the backlines to protect its own staging areas, Moscow failed to anticipate that there could be a problem of this kind.Now Russian troops are overextended, and they have no choice but to hold their positions on the front when, really, their manpower is needed to defend the territory that Russia has already captured.A similar problem has been playing out across two areas of immense, constant Russian vulnerability.

In the air and at sea.In the air, Russia still hasn't found a way to meaningfully engage its air force in the conflict, besides the use of strategic bombers and MiG -31 fighters to launch long -range cruise missiles.

Russia can't risk using some of its most valuable reconnaissance and command aircraft after Ukraine proved able to use American -made Patriot missiles to bring them down.

and the supposedly world -class Su -57 fighter jet is still almost completely absent from contested airspace.Russia's aerial problem is expected to get even worse by early 2027, when Ukraine will take possession of its first Swedish -made Gripen fighter jets, along with a long -range missile, the Meteor, that will have the range to strike Russian strategic bombers as they conduct those missile launches.On the water, Ukraine doesn't have any meaningful naval forces in a conventional sense, butUkraine's use of sea drones has been so effective that Russia's Black Sea Fleet can't risk leaving harbour.Nor is the Black Sea Fleet the only of the Russian ships that has been suffering.In a recent series of strikes on the city of St. Petersburg, timed to conclude with a high -profile summit that Vladimir Putin attended personally, Ukraine managed to strike Boyki, a guided -missile corvette that was being repaired in dry dock.

Ukrainian mid -range aerial drones have also extended the fight at sea, to the extent that they can now carry out precision strikes against naval vessels that were previously vulnerable only to sea drones.

Speaking of St. Petersburg, Russian air defenses on the home front appear to be on the verge of complete collapse.

Ukrainian long -range drones now regularly impact targets that were once unthinkable, from the Baltic Sea oil terminals at Primorsk and Ust -Luga to sensitive or highly specialized defense industrial centers located deep in the Russian heartland.

Even Moscow has been targeted successfully, and according to the chief designer at Ukraine's leading missile innovator Firepoint, a new line of ballistic missiles will soon be operational and capable of hitting Moscow directly.Of course, Russia isn't generally very open about its air defence failures with the rest of the world, so it's hard to determine conclusively whether its failures are due to a lack of interceptors, Ukrainian oversaturation tactics, a shortage of systems overall, a technical deficiency that prevents Russia from recognising incoming drones, or some combination of those factors.What we do know, however, is that Russia hasn't been able to meaningfully address the problem.In fact, the problem is now so bad that Russia recently passed legislation allowing businesses and banks to purchase and operate their own air defences.

That means Russia is basically enlisting untrained civilian security personnel to try and cover the gaps.It's also enlisting the power of the financial sector to purchase and operate anti -drone systems that Russia can't or doesn't want to pay for.

As for its attempts to prevent Ukrainian long -range strikes, Russia seems to be unable to hit the command and control centres or the drone stockpiles that enable the campaign.

So, instead, Russia tries to deter Ukraine by launching an attack.long -range strikes of its own, often targeting population centers, energy infrastructure, or dual -use facilities instead of going after the Ukrainian military.That deterrent, however, is basically ineffective, and Ukraine has proved entirely willing to absorb the pain of those strikes if it means they'll be able to hit Russia back.

As impressive as Ukraine's recent advancements have been, they still only tell part of the story.Just as important, if not even more so, is the incredible consistency with which Russia manages to shoot itself in the foot.Moscow's original sin, so to speak, is one that the rest of the world has gotten very familiar with.A supreme overconfidence that's been helping Russia defeat itself from the very beginning.

Despite the alternative storylines pushed out by Russian bot farms, and repeated no doubt in this very comment section, the idea that Kiev would fall in three days was very much a Russian invention, cited in Western documents based on leaked FSB reports.Then it was confirmed when Ukrainian forces tore into the Russian vehicles that had to be abandoned in its failed early advance and found just three days' worth of provisions.

But much more important than Russia's original mistake was the fact that Moscow still hasn't learned its lesson.Military planners and strategists, all up and down the Russian military, from the unit level on the battlefield to Vladimir Putin himself, still base their decisions and expectations on an aggrandized version of the Russian military that simply doesn't exist.Over time, that problem is fused with another one.The fact that Russian leaders, again from the unit level all the way to the top, simply refuse to give each other honest assessments of what's happening.At a certain point, those leaders realized that they could get away with reporting advances, victories, and other good news that didn't actually exist.The problem often starts small, on the front lines.

A Russian army captain sends a small unit to plant a flag and takes a few selfies in a contested area, before their unit is annihilated in drone strikes.And then the captain sends those selfies to his major, claiming that today his forcesthe territory in the picture.That same day, the major gets several similar reports from other captains, so he reports to his colonel that the front line has moved up by a few hundred meters, when in reality most of the forces under his command have not moved at all.That's a throwaway example, of course, but you get the idea.And that news then travels up the chain until it reaches somebody like Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov.

We put the spotlight on Gerasimov, in particular, because this is how you get statements like the one he made this past April, when he claimed that Russia had captured a total of 80 settlements and over 1 ,700 square kilometres since the start of the year.According to independent war monitors, Gerasimov tripled the amount of territory that Russia had actually taken.And, of course, he failed to mention the territory that Russia had lost.Don't just take it from us, though.Even Russia's Milblogger class was calling bullshit in the aftermath.But those institutional miscommunications, combined with the Russian military's inflated perception of itself, combined to form a third problem.

A demand for forward progress at all costs.At this point in the war, commanders and higher -ups have gotten very used to the idea that their troops are consistently moving forward, consistently taking territory, and consistently getting Russia closer to victory.But now that lie has become too big to fail.And if individual Russian commanders were to report results that don't align with that lie, in places Russia wasn't expecting, then they are at risk of being demoted, relieved of duty, or even worse.

As a result, each level of Russian leadership places immense pressure on the next level below them, all the way down to the frontline soldiers.

Because their commanders need to deliver forward progress, and because their commanders won't get into any real trouble if they sacrifice more lives in exchange, those frontline troops are at immense risk of being ordered forward into incredibly risky assaults.Of course, it's not unusual that a soldier on the front line of a major war would face some risk.

But there's a difference between being asked to advance as part of a coordinated push on a well -defined, well -scouted targetand being told to sneak into a zone where there's been no prior scouting and where Ukrainian surveillance and kamikaze drone coverage is expected to be overwhelming.Those are the kinds of situations that Russian soldiers are being ordered into.Not because there's any expectation that they would succeed, but because their attempt gives their commanders enough plausible deniability to report success.

Eventually, this tactic does sometimes work.Enough Russian soldiers survive in little hiding spots after enough small unit advances that they reach a point of local saturation on territory that they can then take over.

But the costs of munitions, funds, supplies, and especially human life, are so much greater than the value of what Russia's actually capturing.

Nor does Russia particularly care which soldiers get sent into the meat grinder.More and more sources from within the Russian military report the troops are sent into assault units regardless of their other qualifications, including skilled recruits who could make meaningful contributions to enhance Russia's overall situation.Soldiers with experience in electrical work, logistics management, and even the medical field have been reassigned against their will to assault brigades, often without explanation.At times, those reassignments come after they were recruited into the military on the promise that they'd be working with their advanced skill set.Sometimes, the reassignments appear to be random.But at other times, they're used as punishment.

Soldiers who disobey orders, try to desert, or otherwise anger their commanders are highly likely to be reassigned to units where they'll be used as cannon fodder.But let's circle back to Ukraine's mid -range drone campaign.Because that makes this problem even worse.At the best of times, Russian troops were being sent forward into these high -risk assaults with at least a few things going for them.

A little bit of training and prep time, a decently well -supplied sustainment infrastructure to keep them alive, a possibility of medevac if they're wounded, and a possibility that reinforcements would soon join them if they survived.

Today, though, that entire support infrastructure has been torn to shreds.Yet the exerciseof forward progress still remains.So these soldiers are still ordered forward.But they're overexposed, undersupplied and isolated compared to what was already a bad situation.When they're wounded, they aren't evacuated.

They die slow, horrific, predictable deaths.To the point that instead of the usual ratio of killed to wounded in modern war, one killed for every three wounded, Ukrainian assessments suggest that Russia's balance looks more like two soldiers killed for every one wounded.Even worse, the soldiers who are wounded will often be sent back to combat.Every so often, video footage emerges from the frontlines depicting soldiers on crutches or in wheelchairs, bearing visible shrapnel wounds or dealing with limbs that won't work like they're supposed to, forced back into assault units where their death is all but certain.And all of that would be bad enough if Russia wasn't so insistent on hobbling its soldiers even further.Take the example of frontline drone equipment.

According to Russian Milblogger sources, the Kremlin recently ordered most combat units to start giving up drones of various models, sending them back to be reassigned to Russia's dedicated drone forces.That's despite the fact that the Russian drone forces are not properly dispersed along the frontline, and they're not part of any efficient decision -making infrastructure that would allow them to support Russian troops in real time.So where a Russian platoon might once have been able to use small FPV drones to scout their surroundings or strike Ukrainian targets, they now have nothing.They're operationally blind, and beholden to another branch of the military for support.On paper, Russia has started to fix the issue.Officials in Moscow say that Russia is now producing record numbers of FPV drones.

According to the Milbloggers, however, these replacement drones are unreliable, ineffective, and of a dangerously low construction quality.Similarly, Russian troops are still reeling from the decision to cut off access to Telegram a couple of months ago, demanding that Telegram be replaced with the state -run Max app, despite the fact that it is illegal.incomplete, and extremely buggy.Maybe Vladimir Putin vibe -coded it.

The same could be said for the loss of Starlink, a Western -controlled connectivity service that Russia chose to remain dependent on instead of dedicating the appropriate resources to build its own alternative.

Now, in just a moment, we're going to take this all a step further and explain the many ways that Russian military incompetence is not accidental, but intentional.and for all of the worst reasons.But before we get to that, a quick pause to tell you about our subscriber site.Frontstocko is our outlet for the stories that we don't have space to do justice here on the main channel.A place where we can go a lot deeper than we ever do on YouTube.Every week we upload two exclusive videos, two expert written articles, and a podcast or two all covering the conflicts and geopolitical stories that matter most to you.

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A subscription to FRONTS costs just $5 a month, or $50 a year.That's FRONTS .CO, do check it out.And now, back to it.Now look, if we were to end this episode right now, the situation we've described would already be bad enough.

A Russian military that's completely failed to address Ukrainian combat innovations, and one that's consistently made decisions that puts its troops at extreme, unnecessary risk.But all too often, when a country or a fighting force seems to suffer from issues so comprehensive and so obviously stupid that they seem to resist understanding, it's important to ask another question.Who's getting paid?If Russia's obvious incentives are to increase the combat potency of its troops, make legitimate gains on the battlefield, andeventually win the war, then who benefits inside Russia from making sure that doesn't happen?

To answer that question, we're going to invite you to think about the war a bit differently, for just a minute.Take away the people, the guns, the tanks, the drones, and the territory, and think about Russia's invasion as a flow of money.That money is being sent from within Russia and funneled into Ukraine, sent in the form of military equipment, fuel supplies, and direct payments made to Russian soldiers.Then some of that money flows back into Russia, as those soldiers' paychecks travel to bank accounts or are sent to their families.

That flow of funds is partially regulated, but it's happening in and around an active combat zone, which means monitoring is difficult and financial transfers have to happen with limited internal oversight or anti -corruption protections, not to mention that the Russian state isn't exactly the best at internal oversight.Transactions happen on the aggregate scale of tens of billions of roubles.Meaning that even relatively large amounts of missing cash can easily be dismissed as a rounding error.So, look, if you were a person interested in taking money that you could reasonably obtain somewhere within the Russian economy, then the war is the perfect place to do it.

You've just got to figure out where you can get in the way of the regular flow of funds, whether those funds are headed into the conflict zone or travelling out.Take another look at the problems the Russian military is dealing with, and the spectre of internal corruption is everywhere.We'll start with a few examples at the top, from people who exert immense power within the Russian Armed Forces.

Take Roman Dimitriev, a major general who serves as deputy commander of Russia's 20th Combined Arms Army.

Over the span of several years, he engaged in regular shakedowns of his subordinates, worth the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of US dollars, some of which he passed up to his superiors, who expected additional payouts.As he once texted to one of his subordinates, quote, "'War is war, but don't forget aboutcash.Get yours.Delete this message later.Oh my.

Or take the former Deputy Defence Minister, Ruslan Tsarlakov, who was brought up on bribery, money laundering and conspiracy charges that alleged he created a gang to steal from the Russian state budget.He was brought down during a wave of prosecutions that surrounded former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

But even though Russia does occasionally prosecute corrupt officials, the Kremlin's track record dovetails in a very troubling way with the problem we've already mentioned.Commanders only tend to come under real scrutiny when they've already failed in some way that requires their removal, usually due to battlefield setbacks.

From Vladimir Putin's perspective, the nice thing about everybody in the Russian leadership being so corrupt is that when it's time to remove them, it usually doesn't take very long to dig into their finances and bring legitimate, damning charges against them.

But if these commanders understand that they'll only be scrutinized after they've been found to have committed battlefield screw -ups, then they're heavily incentivized to ensure that their screw -ups don't become common knowledge.So they push their subordinates harder, and they push their subordinates harder still, until frontline soldiers are fighting and dying to create an illusion of frontline progress so their commanders can save their skins.Or, take another problem we've already mentioned.The cheap, shitty, and ineffective FPV drones that are being flooded toward the Russian front lines.

That decision was the work of Yuri Vaginov, the commander of the Russian Unmanned Systems Forces, who was appointed in late 2025.But here's the thing about Vaginov.

He has got zero military experience, zero military education, despite now holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.Instead, he owns a very large drone company, the same drone company that's now guzzling down rubles from state contracts and mass -producing the FPV drones that Russian soldiers are expected to use.

Interesting, isn't it?In essence, this single aspiring oligarch has worked out a way to

himself within both the Russian military itself and the Russian defence industrial complex so that he could give himself a monopoly over drone procurement in the biggest drone war the world has ever seen.For Russian soldiers, his appointment is a life -threatening catastrophe.

But for Vaginov himself, the incentives will be to cut corners, inflate costs and otherwise pillage as much of Russia's drone budget as possible.But let's talk about the other way money flows through the Russian side of this war.Into soldiers' pockets, and then, ideally, back to their bank accounts or their families.That's where lower -level commanders get their opportunity.Because they wield the power to decide who lives and who dies.Take an article published this April by The Economist, where a dozen Russian contract soldiers describe a system where low -level infantrymen will bribe their commanders for a position away from the front, and then spend a high share of their remaining wages financing their commander's lifestyle while carrying out unpaid labor on the side.

As one soldier in that article described, troops often start giving up a portion of their paychecks to buy decent drones, or body armor, or other assets that might, you know, keep them alive.

But then, also, quote, you'll pay forever so they don't send you to the meat grinder.Other Russian commanders have purportedly forced troops to pay exorbitant sums to stay alive, and sometimes just to avoid being shot on the spot.According to recent reports by exiled Russian journalists, low -level commanders operate more like gang leaders than actual military personnel in increasingly sophisticated structures that are informed by the high proportion of ex -convicts that now swell the Russian ranks.

Often, when new troops arrive, commanders confiscate their bank cards and PIN codes, and threaten violence against those who don't comply.And when those soldiers are killed, they're formally reported by their commanders as missing, a change that ensures that money will continue flowing to their accounts.Think of frontline soldiers as a pure revenue stream, and even some of Russia's most asinine decisions start to make sense.When a soldier is wounded in combat, that soldier still receives a paycheck, and if they can be kept on the front lines, then the process of extortion can continue.When a higher -skill Russian recruit shows up in one of those units, commanders know that they're likely to have more money, partly because they're going to be paid on a better contract, and partly because they probably have some form of savings squirreled away from their civilian life.

Trap those soldiers in an assault unit, and there's no limit to what they might be willing to pay in order to avoid the meat grinder.But if they seem as if they'll cause trouble, then the meat grinder is right there for their commanders to use.Those incentives also help explain increasing reports of physical torture of Russian soldiers by their own commanders, on or near the front lines, including soldiers who've already been wounded.

Our own Warfronts team has encountered footage of Russian troops who've had multiple limbs amputated due to combat wounds, who were then cling -wrapped onto trees and extorted further.Videos like that can be sent to a soldier's family, who will then end up paying even more to spare the life of a person who's locked into conscription or contract by the Russian state.Quoting researcher Alexandra Arkhipova, who was speaking to PBS about communications from Russian families, quoting, In many cases, in many letters, the people are saying that literally we paid everything to have our father, brother, husband not to be killed.

In many cases, superiors, they use torture to take money from the soldiers.End quote.As for the scale of the brutality, we can't know for sure.But judging by the available information, this kind of treatment is everywhere.One Russian exile outlet, Radio Echo, obtained accounts from soldiers like these, and over a six -month period in 2025, Radio Echo indicated that they'd received almost 12 ,000 complaints of corruption and violence by Russian commanders against their own men.It's here that we find the real root of Russia's ongoing military incompetence.

Where Ukraine has spent the last four years learning, adapting and innovating on the battlefield,Russian generals, defence industrial elites and low -level battlefield commanders have been building a deeply corrupt machine at every level of the Russian Armed Forces.That machine exists to extract wealth for the direct and personal benefit of people lucky enough to wield power, at the expense of frontline soldiers who aren't so fortunate.In a system like that, where officials aren't just personally corrupt, but can safely assume that corruption is all around them, reform just isn't a goal, even if it saves lives.

Reform, there, is a danger, even an enemy.Because if Russia were to ever fix the incompetence that runs through its armed forces, then it would destroy the machine that Russian incompetence is built to serve.

Right now, that status quo demands constant reports of forward progress, by any means necessary, and the Kremlin is willing to pay every ruble in Russia in order to make that happen.But Vladimir Putin's military is overrun with people who don't particularly care about conquering Ukraine, as long as they know they'll be set for life in the post -war Russia that comes next.Russian incompetence is getting worse because it's becoming streamlined, and because the Russian leadership has proved that corruption will go unchecked as long as forward progress continues.The incompetence is the point.Because the longer this situation lasts, the longer this vast, corrupt machine can go on making a profit.Thank you for watching.