Hey friends,
When the Russian military first crossed into Ukraine in 2022, the utter lack of discipline and functioning logistics, combined with shoddy maintenance and widespread corruption surprised even some of the more seasoned intelligence professionals in Washington.
Hell, it surprised me too. At the time, I was already thinking ahead to how Ukraine could run a successful insurgency against the occupying Russian forces.
But after a few weeks, it became clear that Ukraine’s extraordinary will to fight combined with Russia’s broken military kept Russia pinned to the south and east.
On March 6, 2022, Andrei Kozyrev, Foreign Minister of Russia from 1990 to 1996, said, “The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to the President. So, they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military.”
Basically, endemic corruption within the defense sector meant that billions of dollars earmarked for military modernization were instead siphoned off by oligarchs and high-ranking military leaders. But Putin was told everything was going great; and he believed it.
That pattern, of being afraid to tell the boss the truth, is still going on today; only now, these lies are making their way straight to Trump and affecting ongoing negotiations.
Right now, it looks something like this:
Some Russian unit reports that it has advanced.
Perhaps it seized a treeline.
Maybe scouts entered the outskirts of a settlement.
Or nothing significant happened at all.
The report goes upward.
The battalion improves it with beautiful prose that would make Alexander Pushkin himself weep.
The brigade reports substantial progress.
Eventually headquarters says the settlement has effectively fallen.
Then Vladimir Putin announces it, speaks to Trump on the phone, and Trump believes it.
That’s essentially what appears to have happened around Svyatohirsk.
On September 1, Putin claimed Russian forces had captured Svyatohirsk in Donetsk Oblast. Available evidence didn’t support the claim. On September 7, Ukrainian Third Army Corps commander Andriy Biletskyi filmed himself standing openly in the town and described it as comfortably inside Ukraine’s rear area.
He said “I want to appeal to the Russian military and political leadership. Take off your clown noses and colorful wigs. Don’t look like fools. The 60th Mechanized Brigade of the 3rd Army Corps is in full control of the city. This is actually our rear area.”
Even Kremlin-aligned Russian milbloggers acknowledged that the Ukrainian footage demonstrated that Russia didn’t control Svyatohirsk. ISW said the nearest confirmed Russian troops had previously been roughly 13 kilometers away, and more recent Ukrainian counterattacks may have pushed them farther back.
Two days later, Russian milbloggers were openly complaining that the Lyman sector had become distorted by what they call “beautiful reports,” flattering battlefield assessments that exaggerated Russian advances.
