Hey Ryan! Love your work. I’m a former Army SSG and a 35P-RU who had TDYs to Russia for several years(yeah there are a few of us). I can tell you Russians(including officers) don’t care about trash and waste one bit. I’ve got stories upon stories about that. For instance, one time we flew into Kubinka on a joint mission with Romanians and had to do aircraft servicing, including bathroom servicing. Now, in US when you do bathroom servicing a dude comes out with a biohazard truck or cart, decked out in PPE. In Russia, they just had us back-taxi the aircraft to a grassy area and dumped the entire contents of the bathroom tank on the ground. When I asked the Russian overseeing the whole process (a Lt. Col) if that’s gonna cause problems. He responded with “Nah, it’ll dry up.”
You still keep applying NATO/US standards to the Russian army. This is fundamentally the Soviet Army. They don't have the same reliance on the NCO that western armies do. I would suspect the simplest answer is these are poorly trained soldiers who have no idea what the heck they are doing or how this is detrimental, and they don't have a professional NCO corps to smack them in line. Think of the John Boy/Ernest Borgnine version of "All Quiet on the Western Front" from the 80s. Then imagine all those John Boys with NO Ernest Borgnine's to teach them, keep them straight....
Plus they straight up don't give a crap about trash as others noted. We were digging up all sort of toxic crap out of Afghanistan they just dumped there.
It's cultural: russians are fucking slobs. If you look at photos of cities, towns and villages outside of the imperial centre (Moscow & St. Petersburg), there's garbage everywhere. You can find plenty of surveillance camera footage of russians urinating and defecating in the stairwells of apartment blocks that they live in. You can also find footage of liberated Ukrainian homes that were billets of russians. The rooms have been completely vandalized, the furniture is destroyed, there are feces on the floor of every room. They don't feel ownership of their environment and so they don't value it or keep it clean.
I noticed the poor discipline around Russian positions last year. I was totally stunned, to be honest. Our trainers were all Vietnam Veterans to a man and woe betide you if you left even a fag end in the harbour area. Wrappers, empty hexie boxes, matches, chips of soap or even tiny scraps of 4x2 had to be policed and carried out so as to leave no trace for the enemy to analyse. When we went into a position used by some ASEAN partner troops we were able to determine their number, their weapons, their diet, their discipline and some of their tactics; all from intel left behind showing their fighting and sleeping positions and so on. As for human waste, I have started digging a shell scrape only to uncover excrement; not nice but better than it left on the surface. My uncle Max, who was at Stalingrad, said the Russians were tenacious but undisciplined, especially if they had Vodka. He said on the front line everyone stank but you could often smell the Russian positions from the excrement left anywhere and everywhere. He was medevaced out of Stalingrad, then wounded in Italy and captured by the Americans and he thought he had won the lottery. Then he was in a POW exchange and ended up back fighting the Soviets to be taken to a gulag for ten years. He liked the Russians as people but wasn't impressed by their discipline or organistaion. Seems nothing has changed.
“Wrappers, empty hexie boxes, matches, chips of soap or even tiny scraps of 4x2 had to be policed and carried out so as to leave no trace for the enemy to analyse.”
YES! Because they are hunting you, and every skilled hunter looks for signs of his prey’s activity and where it nests. The failure to prevent this indiscipline are the tell-tale cracks in the dam.
Ryan, when refering to the chateau generals, you used a brief video clip ostensibly of a chateau general. Would love to know where that came from. Thank You.
Terrific work here. Big implications. A bit of context: the "chateau general" of WWI is mostly myth. Mostly. There is a grain of truth to it, and an important one in that generals do like the nicest houses in sight. Yet it was the most dangerous war in history to be a general. The list of generals killed or wounded in combat is long, and the most aggressive generals are on it. The image of the chateau general survives because they were the generals who survived.
See also "The Point of View" by Maj. Edward Swinton, 1909. He was pretty prescient. Commanding a vast force in a large area required a central headquarters to receive and process communications. So there are two different reasons why generals end up in chateaus that. today, can be identified and targeted remotely. One, it's safer, and two, you have to stay in touch with so much.
Maybe Russian generals and their staffs are terrified of getting killed. A lot of generals did get killed, along with their staff, in earlier phases of the war because they occupied the nicest building in sight, or the loudest emitting station, so the Ukrainians knew where to look for them. Every few weeks another command post gets taken out through human intel, drone and/or SIGINT methods. That cross-Dnipro raid bagged a commander a couple of months ago, which seems too coincidental. Movements can be tracked just as locations can be found.
Perhaps the typical Russian commander is lying low and avoiding the front because it has become incredibly dangerous to visit there lately. The staff know they can't make it safe for him. It is hard enough just getting him to stay somewhere low-profile, impossible to communicate "the general is coming, clean up your post" with the 999th brigade elements holding Hill 101 without Ukrainians hearing about it.
I noticed the Russian trash problem early on, initially from photos and video of captured/destroyed Ru vehicles. Western vehicle crews often have quite a lot of gear on board, but rarely have the amount of trash and debris I was seeing both inside and outside. My first impression was of a lack of discipline and "give a shit" about the conditions they were living in. I think the Intel folks call that "an indicator." I wasn't really surprised by it, as it matched with my personal experience with the Russian military in the Balkan when I was there. (As a side note, you might be surprised at how difficult that level of filth and disorder is to replicate on a scale model...!)
Recently I've noticed that Ru fighting positions and trenches are equally trash-strewn. The positions are already poorly dug, often damp and muddy. The various drone videos constantly seem to confirm that Ru has a generalized problem with trash and litter discipline even away from the front lines, but especially there.
Something you didn't touch on in your video is the morale effects of living in filth, insects, and vermin. Trenches and fighting positions are already unpleasant enough without bugs and rats and mud, and the psychological toll of those conditions shouldn't be underestimated. Putting relatively untrained soldiers in those positions, apparently for extended periods, can't help but make them even less effective. Misery is absolutely a (negative) combat multiplier.
Not sure if this is accurate or just disinformation from the west, but I’ve seen several articles indicating Putin isn’t too concerned about his conscripts. If this is accurate information (and your videos have raised my bar on scrutinizing content!), then I’m sure the leadership and soldiers are well aware and thus lack the discipline of a professional military. I’d also be interested in you doing a follow up video on the soldier that crossed the border into North Korea. Just an idea for the idea hopper, which I’m sure is overflowing!
That was one of the first things I noticed when the war started: drone footage showed how sloppy the Russians were. Trash everywhere. Empirically, it doesn’t seem to matter. I haven’t heard of disease outbreaks caused by rats or problems with insects. It apparently doesn’t have an impact on their ability to fight. Maybe there’s a benefit: it frees up brain cycles to think about (more) important things.
From experience, a trashy environment like that indicates a number of problems with discipline, leadership, and health. There isn't anything good or advantageous about conditions like this.
sheesh. Russians have many problems: leadership, ill heath, discipline, pay, integrity of the force, vodka, conscription, and a fairly resourceful enemy. Who, in their right mind, would send these men into battle, - especially on such a thin premise, which the kremlin used. This is a joke, but a deadly one.
Always good to police your area, we used to be called out by our NCO to police the tarmac in our area for FOD “foreign object damage” but I always thought it was silly to be picking up other peoples cigarette butt’s and other trash (what were they thinking)? What’s the purpose of having the privates and airmen scouring the area for cigarette butt’s and trash every week or so? Just send a street sweeper and vacuum it up like any other city or town.
I see your logic now, 50 years later, we knew that satellites were above us and probably taking pictures of the base, one way to determine how many soldiers were in the area would be to look for the garbage and since many were undisciplined youths who would leave a trail of cigarette butt’s, candy wrappers, and not pickup after themselves you could extrapolate the number of soldiers in the area.
actually that site didn't look that bad . i have seen videos of positions ukrainians have taken from russians with way more trash strewn everywhere. hey they are mostly miserable conscripts who absolutely don't want to be there. there commanders are often nowhere to be found. the last thing they care about is proper trash disposal. they even leave dead bodies lying around . ukraine has teams that retrieve all dead bodies from both sides .
How does the high number of casualties among Russian Colonels and Generals factor in to your analysis about Russian officers not visiting the front? Wouldn’t that indicate that they do spend alot of time in harm’s way?
Good video! I would love to see how contract soldiers in the Russian army live versus a trench of Mobiks. If you were snatched off the street and given a 24 hours course on being a soldier, then sent to the front... I doubt litter discipline made the cut into what to say in 24 hours.
I would say not much different. Contract soldier vs mobilized is just a legal distinction in Russia- did you volunteer and sign a contract or were you mobilized. In many instances there is still confusion over who’s who, with many contractors finding out they are listed as mobilized and many mobiks learning that apparently there’s a signed contract under their name. As far as training and skills are concerned, there’s not much difference.
Hey Ryan! Love your work. I’m a former Army SSG and a 35P-RU who had TDYs to Russia for several years(yeah there are a few of us). I can tell you Russians(including officers) don’t care about trash and waste one bit. I’ve got stories upon stories about that. For instance, one time we flew into Kubinka on a joint mission with Romanians and had to do aircraft servicing, including bathroom servicing. Now, in US when you do bathroom servicing a dude comes out with a biohazard truck or cart, decked out in PPE. In Russia, they just had us back-taxi the aircraft to a grassy area and dumped the entire contents of the bathroom tank on the ground. When I asked the Russian overseeing the whole process (a Lt. Col) if that’s gonna cause problems. He responded with “Nah, it’ll dry up.”
Not limited to just Russia I think. Look at this ITN news clip from the end of the Falklands conflict...
https://youtu.be/e6YXjFiOY6A?si=awqsJKXrn3S1KBdP
You still keep applying NATO/US standards to the Russian army. This is fundamentally the Soviet Army. They don't have the same reliance on the NCO that western armies do. I would suspect the simplest answer is these are poorly trained soldiers who have no idea what the heck they are doing or how this is detrimental, and they don't have a professional NCO corps to smack them in line. Think of the John Boy/Ernest Borgnine version of "All Quiet on the Western Front" from the 80s. Then imagine all those John Boys with NO Ernest Borgnine's to teach them, keep them straight....
Plus they straight up don't give a crap about trash as others noted. We were digging up all sort of toxic crap out of Afghanistan they just dumped there.
It's cultural: russians are fucking slobs. If you look at photos of cities, towns and villages outside of the imperial centre (Moscow & St. Petersburg), there's garbage everywhere. You can find plenty of surveillance camera footage of russians urinating and defecating in the stairwells of apartment blocks that they live in. You can also find footage of liberated Ukrainian homes that were billets of russians. The rooms have been completely vandalized, the furniture is destroyed, there are feces on the floor of every room. They don't feel ownership of their environment and so they don't value it or keep it clean.
I noticed the poor discipline around Russian positions last year. I was totally stunned, to be honest. Our trainers were all Vietnam Veterans to a man and woe betide you if you left even a fag end in the harbour area. Wrappers, empty hexie boxes, matches, chips of soap or even tiny scraps of 4x2 had to be policed and carried out so as to leave no trace for the enemy to analyse. When we went into a position used by some ASEAN partner troops we were able to determine their number, their weapons, their diet, their discipline and some of their tactics; all from intel left behind showing their fighting and sleeping positions and so on. As for human waste, I have started digging a shell scrape only to uncover excrement; not nice but better than it left on the surface. My uncle Max, who was at Stalingrad, said the Russians were tenacious but undisciplined, especially if they had Vodka. He said on the front line everyone stank but you could often smell the Russian positions from the excrement left anywhere and everywhere. He was medevaced out of Stalingrad, then wounded in Italy and captured by the Americans and he thought he had won the lottery. Then he was in a POW exchange and ended up back fighting the Soviets to be taken to a gulag for ten years. He liked the Russians as people but wasn't impressed by their discipline or organistaion. Seems nothing has changed.
“Wrappers, empty hexie boxes, matches, chips of soap or even tiny scraps of 4x2 had to be policed and carried out so as to leave no trace for the enemy to analyse.”
YES! Because they are hunting you, and every skilled hunter looks for signs of his prey’s activity and where it nests. The failure to prevent this indiscipline are the tell-tale cracks in the dam.
Ryan, when refering to the chateau generals, you used a brief video clip ostensibly of a chateau general. Would love to know where that came from. Thank You.
The movie is in the credit on screen. It’s a Netflix version of all quiet on the western front.
Terrific work here. Big implications. A bit of context: the "chateau general" of WWI is mostly myth. Mostly. There is a grain of truth to it, and an important one in that generals do like the nicest houses in sight. Yet it was the most dangerous war in history to be a general. The list of generals killed or wounded in combat is long, and the most aggressive generals are on it. The image of the chateau general survives because they were the generals who survived.
See also "The Point of View" by Maj. Edward Swinton, 1909. He was pretty prescient. Commanding a vast force in a large area required a central headquarters to receive and process communications. So there are two different reasons why generals end up in chateaus that. today, can be identified and targeted remotely. One, it's safer, and two, you have to stay in touch with so much.
Maybe Russian generals and their staffs are terrified of getting killed. A lot of generals did get killed, along with their staff, in earlier phases of the war because they occupied the nicest building in sight, or the loudest emitting station, so the Ukrainians knew where to look for them. Every few weeks another command post gets taken out through human intel, drone and/or SIGINT methods. That cross-Dnipro raid bagged a commander a couple of months ago, which seems too coincidental. Movements can be tracked just as locations can be found.
Perhaps the typical Russian commander is lying low and avoiding the front because it has become incredibly dangerous to visit there lately. The staff know they can't make it safe for him. It is hard enough just getting him to stay somewhere low-profile, impossible to communicate "the general is coming, clean up your post" with the 999th brigade elements holding Hill 101 without Ukrainians hearing about it.
WoW. Thank You
Yeesh! I’ve seen better policed homeless encampments.
I noticed the Russian trash problem early on, initially from photos and video of captured/destroyed Ru vehicles. Western vehicle crews often have quite a lot of gear on board, but rarely have the amount of trash and debris I was seeing both inside and outside. My first impression was of a lack of discipline and "give a shit" about the conditions they were living in. I think the Intel folks call that "an indicator." I wasn't really surprised by it, as it matched with my personal experience with the Russian military in the Balkan when I was there. (As a side note, you might be surprised at how difficult that level of filth and disorder is to replicate on a scale model...!)
Recently I've noticed that Ru fighting positions and trenches are equally trash-strewn. The positions are already poorly dug, often damp and muddy. The various drone videos constantly seem to confirm that Ru has a generalized problem with trash and litter discipline even away from the front lines, but especially there.
Something you didn't touch on in your video is the morale effects of living in filth, insects, and vermin. Trenches and fighting positions are already unpleasant enough without bugs and rats and mud, and the psychological toll of those conditions shouldn't be underestimated. Putting relatively untrained soldiers in those positions, apparently for extended periods, can't help but make them even less effective. Misery is absolutely a (negative) combat multiplier.
If nothing else, all the litter and trash might become a projectile from mortar and artillery impacts.
Not sure if this is accurate or just disinformation from the west, but I’ve seen several articles indicating Putin isn’t too concerned about his conscripts. If this is accurate information (and your videos have raised my bar on scrutinizing content!), then I’m sure the leadership and soldiers are well aware and thus lack the discipline of a professional military. I’d also be interested in you doing a follow up video on the soldier that crossed the border into North Korea. Just an idea for the idea hopper, which I’m sure is overflowing!
I would love to, but there has been no information put out about the guy
Leverage those military connections!
That was one of the first things I noticed when the war started: drone footage showed how sloppy the Russians were. Trash everywhere. Empirically, it doesn’t seem to matter. I haven’t heard of disease outbreaks caused by rats or problems with insects. It apparently doesn’t have an impact on their ability to fight. Maybe there’s a benefit: it frees up brain cycles to think about (more) important things.
From experience, a trashy environment like that indicates a number of problems with discipline, leadership, and health. There isn't anything good or advantageous about conditions like this.
sheesh. Russians have many problems: leadership, ill heath, discipline, pay, integrity of the force, vodka, conscription, and a fairly resourceful enemy. Who, in their right mind, would send these men into battle, - especially on such a thin premise, which the kremlin used. This is a joke, but a deadly one.
Today, October 3, 2023 is the 30th anniversary of The Battle of the Black Sea, or Operation Gothic Serpent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXFycByi1vE
Always good to police your area, we used to be called out by our NCO to police the tarmac in our area for FOD “foreign object damage” but I always thought it was silly to be picking up other peoples cigarette butt’s and other trash (what were they thinking)? What’s the purpose of having the privates and airmen scouring the area for cigarette butt’s and trash every week or so? Just send a street sweeper and vacuum it up like any other city or town.
I see your logic now, 50 years later, we knew that satellites were above us and probably taking pictures of the base, one way to determine how many soldiers were in the area would be to look for the garbage and since many were undisciplined youths who would leave a trail of cigarette butt’s, candy wrappers, and not pickup after themselves you could extrapolate the number of soldiers in the area.
actually that site didn't look that bad . i have seen videos of positions ukrainians have taken from russians with way more trash strewn everywhere. hey they are mostly miserable conscripts who absolutely don't want to be there. there commanders are often nowhere to be found. the last thing they care about is proper trash disposal. they even leave dead bodies lying around . ukraine has teams that retrieve all dead bodies from both sides .
Thank you Ryan! Another great video!
How does the high number of casualties among Russian Colonels and Generals factor in to your analysis about Russian officers not visiting the front? Wouldn’t that indicate that they do spend alot of time in harm’s way?
Good video! I would love to see how contract soldiers in the Russian army live versus a trench of Mobiks. If you were snatched off the street and given a 24 hours course on being a soldier, then sent to the front... I doubt litter discipline made the cut into what to say in 24 hours.
I would say not much different. Contract soldier vs mobilized is just a legal distinction in Russia- did you volunteer and sign a contract or were you mobilized. In many instances there is still confusion over who’s who, with many contractors finding out they are listed as mobilized and many mobiks learning that apparently there’s a signed contract under their name. As far as training and skills are concerned, there’s not much difference.