You gotta remember that Russians are primarily conscripts, with very few professionals to run the leadership framework. They have incrementally degraded in capability and training not only since the Soviet Times, but during them, not that they were ever highly technically or tactically competent.What. In the ever loving. Fuck. Did I just watch? If that's their "special operations" capabilities, no wonder they're getting their asses handed to them in Ukraine.
Yeah, let's assault up an OPEN street, with NO COVER. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea...
This looks like the same crap I saw the Army teaching their recruits, before OIF/GWOT. Smh...I remember telling a fellow Marine NCO "They're going to bury half these guys if they go into combat with that training." And at the beginning of the insurgency I was (unfortunately) correct.
@TheGerman has just GOT to see this crap. LOL!
A lot of that is due to the waves of attrition to prime age males from Great War, Russian Civil War, WWII, Krushchev Era, the 1980s, and final official collapse, and general distrust of conscripts.
They don’t even let enlisted work on their fighter aircraft, and use maintenance officers to do the hands-on work. Maintenance really isn’t in their culture.
Circus acts seem to be common tricks and stunts they like to demonstrate with their special military units. Beatings have been a long tradition and major problem in their army. A lot of conscripts are killed each year from internal organ damage from the junior leaders, who see beatings as a way of enforcing discipline and channeling their own personal inferiority/bad lot in life. Several young Russian friends and acquaintances I knew were genuinely worried about just basic conscript service because so many dudes get severely injured or killed.
Beatings have been the norm for centuries in the Russian Army.
“Mom, don’t believe what anyone tells you. They’re bullying me here, exhausting me psychologically and extorting money … I don’t see how I can go on. I’m already very tired. I’m sorry it all turned out like this,” said his last text message to his mother, shown on the local TVK television channel.
Having the Russian word for “cock” carved on his forehead with a razor blade as punishment for smoking an illicit cigarette in his barracks toilet was the last straw for Private Artyom Pakhotin.
Two weeks later, on April 19, 2018, he shot himself dead with an AK-74 during his platoon’s drill training session in the Urals region of Sverdlovsk.
“We receive about 300 phone calls a day — 10% of them reporting hazing incidents — along with 20 emails a day, one or two of which will be about hazing,” Latynin told The Moscow Times, adding that the other complaints are about verbal abuse from officers, inadequate medical treatment and failure of the authorities to issue uniforms.
All able-bodied Russian men are obliged to complete a year of compulsory military service before they turn 27, although thousands manage to avoid it by bribing recruiting officials and doctors. According to official statistics there are 1.9 million Russian army personnel, about 80% of whom are conscripts.