As Ukrainian defenders advance, the degradation and overestimation of the Russian military power become increasingly evident and visible, even to Russians themselves, who have been negatively influenced for a long time by corruption, lack of adequate training, discipline, and insufficient material and technical support.
This applies not only to the military personnel directly on the front lines but also to the highest military leadership of Russia. The growing problems faced by the occupiers on the front lines, including a severe shortage of human and material reserves despite propagandistic slogans, are becoming more and more apparent.
Russia’s capabilities and resources are dwindling further. Reports of battlefield losses by Russian authorities do not even enjoy trust within the country. Russians are conscripted into the military under false pretenses, sent to the front lines without training, lacking the necessary military equipment, and even without first-aid kits or proper instructions. The Kremlin continually lowers requirements for conscripts in the army to increase the recruitment of «cannon fodder.» The actual number of Russian citizens who have died in the war unleashed by Russia is much greater; not all cases of Russian deaths are reported in open sources.
Due to the Ukrainian forces’ counteroffensive, the Kremlin is dispatching untrained conscripts and mobilized soldiers to Ukraine, many of whom surrender en masse due to the absence of even preliminary military training, poor material and technical support, low motivation, severe stress situations, and the heavy losses Russian soldiers face along the entire Ukrainian front line. Russian authorities have failed to provide 300,000 people with the necessary equipment, uniforms, and military gear. The mobilized soldiers are fighting in boots, steel helmets, and Soviet-era uniforms, which is unacceptable in the 21st century against the Ukrainian army, equipped to Western standards.
After the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the combination of uneven and inadequate preparation, inexperienced troop deployments, and insufficient resources to conduct large-scale combat operations has led to the loss of many of the most combat-capable units and personnel in the Russian military. In a year and a half of combat operations, the Russian army has lost thousands of units of military equipment worth millions, sometimes even billions of dollars. Military bases lack an acceptable quantity of operational equipment necessary to outfit dozens of units with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. There is also a shortage of equipment, rifles, and ammunition. While Ukrainian tank crews are learning to operate modern Western tanks like the Leopard 2 and Challenger 2, Abrams, the Russian army is reactivating old Soviet-era tanks such as the T-54, T-55, and T-62 from storage and pulling out weapons from World War II-era storage.
Because of the scale of Russian losses and the resistance of Russian forces to NATO systems they had never encountered before, the occupiers are increasingly forced to rely on weapons from Soviet stockpiles. From this, it can be inferred that the production capacity of Russian repair firms has reached its objective limits, just as military factories seem to have reached a similar level in the production and modernization of various weapon systems. During the war, the Russian defense industry failed to replenish the losses suffered in Ukraine with new equipment. Factories are unable to produce the necessary number of modern T-90 tanks and repair relatively modern T-72 and T-80 tanks taken out of storage.
Thanks to the efforts of the Ukrainian armed forces, Russia’s reputation in the global arms market is being destroyed, as everyone sees how Russian weapons systems are being destroyed. This is the result of the Ukrainian armed forces successfully refuting all propagandistic claims regarding invincible Russian weapons, including S-400 systems, Iskander missiles, and others, which are being successfully shot down by air defense systems. If the war continues, Russia risks losing the Black Sea Fleet and key enterprises in the rear, as there is no defense even against drones.
Gradually, the war is returning to Russian territory, to symbolic centers and military bases. Drones and missiles are being shot down over Russian regions, including the Kremlin. After the general mobilization, the war will reach every Russian home, every family. People in Russia are beginning to understand that this war has no purpose. It is a senseless occupation war. The degradation of the Russian army is worsening.