On the first day of the war I predicted (although not publicly) that Russian army will be very ineffective due to huge levels of corruption and incompetence, while the Ukrainians would be prepared to fiercely defend their country. (For context: I grew up in Moscow, now live in US). Part of my intuition is that under Putin all the non-public-facing government institutions had little reason to maintain competence and hugely open to corruption—the most obvious (to me) example being the degradation of the special services, as exemplified by the failure to successfully poison Navalny, exacerbated by then actually blabbing the details of the operation to Navalny himself (leaving aside all the moral, practical, legal, etc questions of whether they should have tried to do it in the first place, there is undeniably staggering level of incompetence in how they went about it). The other side of it, is that Ukrainians had years to prepare for this—both morally and practically, and over these years Putin did a very good job constantly reminding them why they strongly dislike him, and why they would not want to find themselves under his rule.
It seems that I myself became a victim of the conviction about “one of the most combat-ready armies in the world” and that while other areas are not developing, the army is developing very strongly. Although it would be a very logical assumption that corruption will indeed not even be at the same level, because it is impossible to destroy all areas except one, but higher due to non-publicity and the lack of market mechanisms.
On the first day of the war I predicted (although not publicly) that Russian army will be very ineffective due to huge levels of corruption and incompetence, while the Ukrainians would be prepared to fiercely defend their country. (For context: I grew up in Moscow, now live in US). Part of my intuition is that under Putin all the non-public-facing government institutions had little reason to maintain competence and hugely open to corruption—the most obvious (to me) example being the degradation of the special services, as exemplified by the failure to successfully poison Navalny, exacerbated by then actually blabbing the details of the operation to Navalny himself (leaving aside all the moral, practical, legal, etc questions of whether they should have tried to do it in the first place, there is undeniably staggering level of incompetence in how they went about it). The other side of it, is that Ukrainians had years to prepare for this—both morally and practically, and over these years Putin did a very good job constantly reminding them why they strongly dislike him, and why they would not want to find themselves under his rule.
It seems that I myself became a victim of the conviction about “one of the most combat-ready armies in the world” and that while other areas are not developing, the army is developing very strongly. Although it would be a very logical assumption that corruption will indeed not even be at the same level, because it is impossible to destroy all areas except one, but higher due to non-publicity and the lack of market mechanisms.