Paul Goble
Staunton, April 11 – Putin made “a crude strategic miscalculation” when he overrated the capability of the Russian military to take on Ukraine, confusing the models of new weapons which the military-industrial complex was happy to show him with the rearmament of the military with them, Vladimir Pastukhov says.
To put it in more lapidary language, the London-based Russian analyst says, the Kremlin leader failed to make the necessary distinction between a parade and an actual war and so failed to see that the new weapons he was being shown were not being produced and adopted by his military as a whole (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=62549C9B8F707).
As a result, Pastukhov says, Putin failed to understand that his very large army was in fact one of World War II vintage and that if it were confronted by a military with contemporary weapons, it would be in very serious trouble. Given that the West has provided Ukraine with such weapons, Russia’s military is “bogged down in the Ukrainian steppe like a wasp in syrup.”
One is compelled to ask, the London analyst says, “how could this happen?” He suggests that it did because of Putin’s childish passion for playing soldiers and his proclivity to speak to defense designers rather than talk with the producers of military hardware. The former could show him shiny new weapons; the latter would explain why the army doesn’t have them.
It is not the case that the designers lied to Putin, but it is certain they misled him because they did not tell the whole story; and that is this: “Russia has always been able to make weapons,” and the backlog today from Soviet times means that it will be able to do so for some time into the future.
But shiny models “don’t win wars.” Real conflicts are won “with mass-produced weapons the army is actually equipped with in numbers that a war requires.” To achieve that, Pastukhov points out, the entire defense establishment needs to be transformed – and that is something its leadership under Putin doesn’t want or feel at all compelled to do.
And the explanation for that is simple as well: When a state is nothing more than a bandit, one can hardly expect its army to be modern. “Whatever a state is, so too will be its military.”
https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/04/putin-miscalculated-on-his-military.html
ukrainetoday.org 
And the explanation for that is simple as well: When a state is nothing more than a bandit, one can hardly expect its army to be modern. “Whatever a state is, so too will be its military.”
Never was a truer word spoken. Add to that, thieves, liars, rapists and genocidal maniacs.
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But they still can inflict death and misery on a colossal scale unless they are totally crushed. We see people like the Dutch “seriously considering” providing weapons. Well it’s a bit fucking late now isn’t it?
As far as I know the long range heavy artillery promised by Joe has not arrived. Czech MiGs? German Leopards?
Zel’s shopping list still hasn’t been fulfilled.
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I get the feeling the West would sooner see Ukraine capitulate to the nazis, it would reprieve them of actually making decisions to crush Putler’s murder gang.
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Absolutely, and it would ensure Putin didn’t use nukes and get NATO involved.
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The West has been wrong with everything else about the rodent and mafia land, so this wouldn’t be too encouraging, concerning the nukes or NATO involvement.
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“…the entire defense establishment needs to be transformed – and that is something its leadership under Putin doesn’t want or feel at all compelled to do.”
Well, the number one problem with mafia land is its bottomless corruption. It starts with monies designated for defense expenditures being skimmed from before it even reaches the recipients, and then those recipients will skim from it before passing it on to their departments and those departments will skim from it before they pass it on to their sectors and eventually, instead of 100 shiny new planes, you get 10 new ones and the rest are Potemkin planes. The same goes for maintenance budgets. Instead of repairing all vehicles, 10% get repaired, and the rest serve as boneyard occupants that must sacrifice their parts to keep the other junk running.
Then those monkeys start a huge war and get those weapons destroyed that do function and due to stupidity, or bad planning, or poor maintenance many others get abandoned for one reason or another.
Mafia land is a toothless paper tiger and it cannot win this war. Putler just hasn’t been told yet.
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