How Russian Army Works

As war in Ukraine progressed many begun to speculate on capacity and abilities of the Russian Army. Some videos of soldiers being issued rusty guns that do not work and other such reports. Prigozhin's Wagner Group rebellion managed to get far into Russian territory before he was stopped. Some even speculated that Russian soldiers are demotivated and will all surrender give a chance.

Yet sometimes Russian Military still makes some progress in Ukraine. Russia still holds significant parts of Ukraine and Ukraine cannot take any of it back.

So where is the truth in all that?

The truth is that Russia, just like any other country can only have so many proper soldiers who can and will fight for their country. However, Russia has territory that is too large for so many soldiers to even defend, much less attack into foreign land. 

So how Russia manages to boost its numbers and appear to be powerful and intimidating to its neighbors and global community? The answer is deception. Russia pads their numbers with raw numbers of forcefully drafted soldiers who are unmotivated to fight and will desert or surrender if they get a chance. However not all Russian soldiers are like that, some will fight for the country.

However, Russian command know this fact better than average observer does and so have their tactics and strategies work around this fact.  Russian command does group soldiers in regiments and divisions based on both their loyalty and ability. They themselves do know who-is-who in the confusing roster of their many divisions. Because of that they will never assign a defection prone regiment to hold the line and will have some way of plugging the gap should the sector held by defection prone troops are under attack.

Terminology they use is likely deliberately non-descriptive and misleading to confuse observers.

Here is how they do it:

Their best regiments are VDV, sometimes informally called desantura. Officially an Airborne paratrooper who are part of Airforce in reality they are used like a very mobile stop gap troops who can swiftly relocate to an endangered sector of the front and give a fight to an enemy.

As loyal as Doberman and half as smart, there soldiers are both capable or real firefight and utterly loyal to their country. It is them that Russia likes to showcase to various observers. During these expositions they break bricks with their foreheads and do many other extreme things. Showing all this to foreigners is a cunning way to mislead them into thinking that all Russian soldiers are like that. In reality only VDV is like that, and Russian own command knows it.

Because of all of the above, VDV is both well trained and well equipped. On parades they wear blue berets. They also wear their camouflage jackets partly unbuttoned, so that their distinctive white and blue striped telniashka is visible. 

The rest of the numerous Ground forces regiments have one small element in their names, that divides them into two groups. Some have gvardeiyskaya (guards) in their name and others do not. Normally guards refer to a few ceremonial units, tasked with protecting high government officials. Here however around half of all regiments have it. That raises the question why?

The reason is that loyal recruits are sent to guards' regiments. Recruiters would evaluate how willing a person to fight for the country. Those who do not have physical strength and abilities to be in VDV but have loyalty would be assigned to guards' regiments.

Because of that guards' regiments are both better trained and equipped than their non-guards' counterparts. Russian Generals can trust that they would at least hold the line until VDV can arrive to relieve them and more important sections of the front are given to these troops.

Finally plain non-guards' regiment is where your average unwilling recruits are assigned. People who tried to dodge draft but were drafter regardless and such. They do not want to fight and in most cases cannot even if they wanted. After all they were taken into military against their will and have no reason to fight for their oppressors.

Command regards them poorly and issues them rusted guns that do not fire and no ammunition. Their only purpose is to dig trenches and just be there to mislead the enemy of the numbers Russia can muster. After all soldiers are observed at a distance from a binocular over the ground shaking from shelling. Their opponent would not be able to tell if they have any ammo in their magazines or if they have any military training at all. So long as they hold something that resembles a gun and wear a uniform its good enough to prevent enemy from attempting to take trenches from the march. However, if enemy is well prepared for an assault against trenches, then small arms would not be able to stop them anyway. Either way training or ammunition makes no difference to the outcome. That saves money as well and allows to recruit more low-quality soldiers just like that.

Of course, if enemy by the off chance just attacks them unexpectedly, they will simply collapse as Kharkiv front in Ukrainian Kharkiv offensive in Russia-Ukrainian war. Because of that Russian command needs to make sure they are replaced with guards or VDV if enemy intends to attack in this direction. That is why espionage is essential for Russian military performance.

There are also some irregular regiments such as Kadyrovites or Wagner Group. Unlike other countries where paramilitaries would be the least capable, here they are batter then baseline infantry at least in some way. They too might exist to either mislead the enemy of popular support or to intimidate population.

That is how Russian army works. It's a half paper tiger but its handlers do know who to use its harder parts to stove off enemy. To fight it you need to be able to find and then attack the weak parts before the command would get a change to respond.