Ivan Matveichenko

Private Equity | Ukraine

May 11, 2024

I feel like there’s a certain cognitive dissonance in the West when it comes to Russian army.

It’s weak, poorly equipped and even more poorly organised. They almost ran out of tanks, they are running low on missiles and so on.

BUT we need to stop them now, or they will conquer all of Ukraine and then will come after Poland and Baltic states. We need to ramp up ammo production capacity because we cannot catch up to Russians and we might need to send troops over to Ukraine.

These are conflicting messages, are they not? Truth is Russians are smart, they adapt and they have a twisted sense of morality which works wonders during war. For example they throw newly mobilised recruits and prison inmates at Ukrainian positions first and only then advance with elite storm troopers. They also shoot the deserters in some units. Ukrainians send their very best and most of them are dead by now. Because it is inhumane to draft the prisoners. Well now we are doing it anyways, what an irony.

But the absolute worst thing for us is that current Russian military leadership (Shoigu and Gerasimov are rumoured to step down soon) is head and shoulders above Ukrainian senior military leadership. If you did not know it was not only Zaluzhniy who was “promoted to an ambassador”, but also his close associates and top Ukrainian military minds were “asked” to leave an army.

In 2022 it was military prodigy Zaluzhniy and his team against old idiots Shoigu and Gerasimov. In 2024 it will be Russian general Surovikin (who built multi echelon defense system that Ukrainians were not able to penetrate) against Ukrainian general Syrskyi, who apparently cannot successfully rotate 2 brigades 2 times in a row. One was during Ocheretyno breakthrough and now same thing happening in Kharkiv area.

I am concerned.