[filoleg]

Solid take. It always blows my mind when people in the west try to paint russian military as some sort of "spetznas spec ops elite soldiers from call of duty" tier, all while growing up there I was given a very different story.

A month or so before the war even started, as I was talking to my dad (who used to be a low-level officer back in his days and, unfortunately, currently lives in Russia), he quickly pointed out that Russia is about to embarass themselves big time, as the military is extremely corrupt there. All those tanks that have been presented to higher ups as maintained and functional for decades? As the tradition goes, some local military higher ups just pocketed the money and were relaying the "everything is well and maintained" to higher higher-ups from the outside. That's not just tanks, that's quite literally every single piece of equipment, as long as there was a way to pocket the money by not maintaining the equipment.

My dad had stories from his own military days, where his platoon had been given orders to "dress up the vehicles" to make it look like they are all good and operational when higher ups from outside of the region were visiting. In reality, they all were rusted up and wouldn't survive a 50 mile drive. I kept hearing those stories since I was a child, and the current performance of Russian military in Ukraine certainly affirms them.