Yeah, definitely wasn’t taught in schools, unsurprisingly. Even in Germany (both of them) it was minimized, though at least in West Germany students learned about “Russian babies”, but more from an angle “war is evil, soldiers rape”, than specifically anti-Russian. At least that is my understanding. Which is kind of my original point, I would not assume that soldiers of any of the ex-Soviet countries are better than from others. It might happen that Ukrainian military leaders will be more strict in that regard, but this remains to be seen.
I assume that the Ukrainian army was significantly “Westernized” during the last decade.
No evidence other than dozen articles from various sources I have read recently, but the story seems consistent (still might be propaganda, though). According to those sources, NATO offered quite a lot of training for non-member countries as a part of Partnership for Peace. Ukraine took that opportunity very seriously; they had a strong motivation to get better quickly. Russia was also invited, but only did some half-assed effort, mostly using the training as a “vacation” for a few selected soldiers.
So I would assume that 10 years ago, there was not much difference between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, from the perspective of training and professionalism. But today, there probably is.
After watching some interviews with Russian POWs, and listening to intercepted phone calls (yes, possibly strong selection bias, maybe completely staged), it seems to me that the Russia’s army is organized very ineffectively, relying on numerical superiority, not caring much about how many soldiers die. To put it bluntly, Russian army seems to be used as a form of population control (of the non-Russian ethnic groups), so from this perspective occasionally dying soldiers are a feature, not a bug, as long as the war ultimately results in victory. The only problem is that in Ukraine too many soldiers are dying now, the territory is being lost, and Russia is running out of tanks. New soldiers are only given one week of training, and survive on average about one week in the battle.
Shortly, my impression is that Soviet/Russian army has always been “a very large group consisting mostly of poorly trained people”. That seems to explain everything—the rapes, the looting, and ultimately the defeat by Ukrainian army. Yes, Ukraine got lots of weapons from the West, but if both armies had an equivalent amount of training, Russia still would have won.
Yeah, definitely wasn’t taught in schools, unsurprisingly. Even in Germany (both of them) it was minimized, though at least in West Germany students learned about “Russian babies”, but more from an angle “war is evil, soldiers rape”, than specifically anti-Russian. At least that is my understanding. Which is kind of my original point, I would not assume that soldiers of any of the ex-Soviet countries are better than from others. It might happen that Ukrainian military leaders will be more strict in that regard, but this remains to be seen.
I assume that the Ukrainian army was significantly “Westernized” during the last decade.
No evidence other than dozen articles from various sources I have read recently, but the story seems consistent (still might be propaganda, though). According to those sources, NATO offered quite a lot of training for non-member countries as a part of Partnership for Peace. Ukraine took that opportunity very seriously; they had a strong motivation to get better quickly. Russia was also invited, but only did some half-assed effort, mostly using the training as a “vacation” for a few selected soldiers.
So I would assume that 10 years ago, there was not much difference between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, from the perspective of training and professionalism. But today, there probably is.
After watching some interviews with Russian POWs, and listening to intercepted phone calls (yes, possibly strong selection bias, maybe completely staged), it seems to me that the Russia’s army is organized very ineffectively, relying on numerical superiority, not caring much about how many soldiers die. To put it bluntly, Russian army seems to be used as a form of population control (of the non-Russian ethnic groups), so from this perspective occasionally dying soldiers are a feature, not a bug, as long as the war ultimately results in victory. The only problem is that in Ukraine too many soldiers are dying now, the territory is being lost, and Russia is running out of tanks. New soldiers are only given one week of training, and survive on average about one week in the battle.
Shortly, my impression is that Soviet/Russian army has always been “a very large group consisting mostly of poorly trained people”. That seems to explain everything—the rapes, the looting, and ultimately the defeat by Ukrainian army. Yes, Ukraine got lots of weapons from the West, but if both armies had an equivalent amount of training, Russia still would have won.