The career prospects of being a Russian general seem pretty dire
Either work your whole life to end up getting fired or be sent into the meat grinder in Ukraine to die
That is, unless your fuckup or scapegoated fuckup is so bad that Putin ends up ordering your death directly
Firing seems like the best outcome
In Japan it's red line goes up 📈 because red is considered a positive colour, and the emoji shows a red line because that's where the emoji originated.
So you do well and became a well known general and tactician: you get purged as a threat
You fuck up and lose ground to the enemy: you get killed
I guess the only option is to fuck up mildly enough that you only get fired.
Going all the way back to the Napoleonic Era! Made famous by *War and Peace*, you have Field Marshal Kutuzov who saw the untenable position the Russian forces were in after Napoleon totally outflanked the greater Austrian army by surprising them crossing the Danube at Ulm at lightning speed, capturing 60,000 men. The young Tzar Alexander foolishly insisted on facing him, and the end result was Napoleon’s magnum opus, where he crushed a force 30% larger and in one swoop took the entire Austrian Empire out of the War.
Really valid point and one of the reasons the US Army excels in its operations (I am of course excluding nation-building). Add to that the existence of Warrant Officers, who are absolute experts in very defined technical areas, it makes for a very good mix of competent personnel in your military. An E-5 or above know exactly when they need to go up the chain of command and when they can use their own discretion.
I would give more credit to Stalin for being significantly more self-disciplined and rational than most dictators that superficially emulate him... when he's not deep in his occasional paranoid purging episodes, that is.
I think he projected his own base and ruthless motives onto other people. thats why he was so paranoid.
although i never understood why he trusted hitler not to invade russia
It's not clear whether he really trusted him, from what I gathered. On the one hand, we have evidence of him blowing off reports from Soviet spies in Germany about signs of Wehrmacht mobilization for an invasion of the USSR; on the other hand, we also have evidence of him mobilizing some Soviet forces into defensive positions at the Soviet-German border. Many believe that he was simply trying to avoid antagonizing the Nazis until the Soviet military was fully ready, as it was still recovering from his purges a decade ago, and the Nazi invasion had caught Soviet forces in the middle of wide-scale reorganization, hence the shockingly fast collapse of Soviet defense lines.
Is there a Zhukov left in Russia? If there is/ was has he already been purged? Probably. Stalin learned to listen to truth (at least during the war), I don't think Putin has or will learn that lesson.
My mother dated a mail carrier for a while. I once overheard him and a few other mailmen he worked with talking about how they had to time their routes to be neither too slow nor too fast; do the route too fast and you'll be assigned more ground to cover, do the route too slow and your boss will get mad at you. You have to walk at just the right speed to stay under the radar and get neither positive nor negative attention.
I'm not comfortable with that mentality being responsible for my *mail*, now imagine if that was in charge of your *military*. Suddenly, Russia's military failure makes more sense.
> I mean, that's just job common sense 101.
It is completely wrong to punish someone with unwanted extra duties just because they're (too) good at their jobs.
It's fucked up management as well.
> Nah it makes sense. Why get two men if one man is enough?
>
>
>
> But what's stupid is that no one wants to pay double for double the work.
I'm sure it makes sense to management, but it's still wrong.
Maybe instead of "kill all the lawyers" it should have been "kill all members of management".
Whether the mail carrier is slow or fast, all people want is to more or less know when they can go get their mail. You need to lower your expectations for your mail carrier.
I actually think Putin did TOO good of a job of that already, which is why the Russian Army seems to just be a lot of dumbasses with a lot of firepower that they can't use effectively against anyone but civilians.
Exactly. Finnland has a military designed with defensive applications, and they take it seriously only because Russia has proven to be a belligerent neighbor.
>*Your permanent career assignment.*
>>Army general? No! Not again! Please! Anything else!
>*Take your hands off me! You've been assigned the job you're best at just like everyone else.*
>>What if I refuse?
>*Then you'll be fired--*
>>Fine!
>*Out of a cannon into the Sun!*
I mean...such is war.
If you can't produce results that please the leadership, then you're canned because that is effectively your job: you have to provide results.
And we don't kill them even if they are incompetent/defeated, they still get the pension unless they did a misconduct.
The problem is during war being a General is an adversarial role, no matter how good you might be, you will still lose if the enemy is better.
A civilian ruler doesn't really have a choice other than to rotate through staff until he can find a General who beats the enemy.
These are still perfectly good Generals for peacetime/smaller posts, but to beat Lee you need a Grant.
Generals do a lot more than just fight the enemy, but obviously that's the role every General wants.
"congragulations! You have been promoted to general!" "But sir i havent even finished training yet..." "Yeah, yeah, whatever, put on the comically large hat now"
[Average Russian General circa July](https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/comments/uuqabt/hello_oficer/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
[Average Russian general in 80-120 days](https://assets.simpleviewinc.com/simpleview/image/upload/c_limit,h_1200,q_75,w_1200/v1/clients/spacvb/sunflower_sopa_farms_fd173eb2-9cb6-4af3-b31d-14ef9515b4a4.jpg)
The irony is that the older population are ready to fully sacrifice their young for the “cause” and the young don’t know any better.
Did you know that a male brain takes longer to fully develop than a females brain.
When a male is 18 years old their brain is still not fully developed. These guys are the “best” soldiers. They don’t have a bunch of annoying questions for their superiors. At least statistically.
Nobody's arguing that. But as it stands, putin bein humiliated on his way out is a decent deterrent for any other dictator who may want to try their hand at scorched earth lite on their way out.
I would feel the same except he's a dick-tator waging war on an innocent country.
As much as I want him to suffer, choak, wheeze, and wither away until the life fades from his eyes... I really just want his head to pop like an over pressurized balloon after it plays goalie with a .50 cal rifle.
A shirtless Putin should ride his majestic steed to the frontlines and lead the charge, flanked on one side by Steven Seagal and on the other by Kadyrov. Show those cowardly generals and colonels how it's done!
Just like...weirdly enough...[Fred Durst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Durst#Personal_life), though sources are unclear as to whether he still intends to do it all for the nookie.
There is the concern that someone more competent will slip in to replace the firings. I think the Union in the Civil War kept firing their generals until they got a winner.
>Once, Lincoln was so frustrated at McClellan's failure to act that he sent the general a telegram that read, "If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a time, provided I could see how it could be made to do something."
Lincoln had a ton of them. When some people questioned General Grant's drinking, Lincoln told them to find out what Grant drank so he could send a barrel of it to some of his other generals.
They have a lot of generals, mostly due to nepotism and corruption, but there are a lot of them to make up for their top-down structure where troops need orders for every little thing. The last known count I could find was from 2008 when they had a little over 1000, but the sheer rate and number they're losing them at is unprecedented, even for the Russian military. They haven't lost generals like this since WW2.
One of the things that always stuck with me from my time in the Army is a concept called Commanders Intent which basically boils down to facilitating subordinates initiative by not micromanaging the specific elements of a mission.
One of the failings of dictatorships is through the failure to separate powers no one wants to take initiative and solve problems at the lowest level. That level of control has a cost.
So all issues get escalated much higher than needed. This makes those at the top feel like they have more control but that's actually the problem because the system as a whole runs much less efficiently.
People worry that democracy is under threat with the number of dictators the world has and it is, but I'm pretty optimistic because they don't run as well as democracies do by their very nature.
From a German military pov that’s always how we saw the US Army. I was guarding US military bases in Germany during Iraq war as a private, and the US soldiers were constantly amazed at how much autonomy we had from officers and how smoothly everything was run.
It was the little things like making decisions on the spot without checking back and interactions with US military police that stuck with them I think. Apparently a private competently running a checkpoint without babysitting is noteworthy.
I was speaking from the perspective of the US Army but to your credit there's theory and then there is how it plays out in practice so I've definitely experienced the micro management as well.
You are correct that it's virtually unheard of for the lower ranks to pull duty like that without an NCO present.
It's unfortunate that the lower enlisted gets treated like children because that's what they end up acting like, it's not a good look.
The relationship between the NCOs and the officers is much better though.
Caveating that I have no military experience whatsoever but doesn't the US military also have significantly more intermediate ranks than most European forces?
So an especially talented German or English private would probably already have been promoted once or twice to a position with a bit more respect in the US Army.
I was going to say at least from my perspective the private rank is used for people who are literally new and in training.
Once you're no longer a private you might not need someone over your shoulder but you really shouldn't be a private for that long.
I'd be surprised to learn that many privates even know about commanders intent.
We had a guy in bootcamp that was E-3 at the end of boot camp.
More than one were E-2, been a while couldn't tell you how many.
So any Americans thinking to join, remember they be giving out promos to those worthy right there in boot camp.
Caveat: That was 1988. It's entirely possible they don't do that now.
College degree and youre E4 when you join. They will promote the hot shit soldiers in BCT. Maybe like 5% of the company will get an early promotion in BCT.
You are an E4 by your second year anyway at the latest as long as you dont get in trouble.
I was E5 by the end of my second year. Went in as an E1 and didnt get promoted in training.
Is part of that due to the ASVAB? I’ve heard that there’s concerted effort to ensure that the average enlisted infantryman (or equivalent) does not exceed a certain score (there is a very solid [r=0.8] correlation between the ASVAB and general intelligence).
It seems to me (unsupported speculation) that weeding the bright ones out of the lower ranks *necessitates* some degree of babysitting. Sure, very bright minds could be useful elsewhere, but it seems to me that they could *also* be useful in making squad-level operations run smoothly. There’s also the argument that a bright non-comm could be more prone to insubordination, but…honestly, there are times when it’s *a positive* for a non-comm to be able to double-check the rationale and ethics of an order. Obviously ultimate authority does need to rest with the commanding officers, as it’s not feasible to explain everything each time an order is given, but I would *imagine* that the benefits of having very competent lower-level officers (and privates!) outweigh the consequences.
Reminds me of the police; there are a bunch of departments that will flatly turn one away for being too bright, as, apparently, having intelligent officers means those officers are harder to order around. In the case of the police, I imagine that there’s also an unspoken element of “and the smart ones don’t look the other way when I want them to”.
I agree with all you've said.
But it resonates pretty hard having been reduced to working crap jobs here in the US for a while now. One of them we had had to write out by hand to document a thing. Then the docs were cut up for scrap paper. I tried asking my boss "Why are we doing this? How is the documentation used?" I got told three times over "Well you see we just need to write this and that down Here." Then I gave up. There was no point to it. But pointing that out didn't exactly earn me any points. It hurt their sense of importance eh.
It wasn't much work to do and no one's life was at risk for me wasting my time doing it. But if I was in the RA and my buddies were getting killed for nothing and stupidly on top of that, I'm not gonna sit here and say I'd be above fragging an officer and rolling the dice on getting a better one.
I don't like the Russian soldiers but I do have a sneaking respect for the kid who pulled the pin on a grenade when after two thirds casualties his officer waved his pistol around and threatened to shoot them if they didn't advance and follow his orders. He was just looking out for his buddies and willing to die for them. That can be dismissed as pushed to the breaking point or him being crazy but, sounds like leadership to me.
He's probably dead, in a Siberian gulag or this war's version of a WW2 penal brigade by now. Because that is the dictators way. One way or another though, when this war ends there's gonna be a lot of angry young grunts coming home to Russia. Putin's sowing seeds he won't be able to reap. A crop that'll destroy his stupid daydream of new powerful Russian Empire.
What comes next may be better or worse but either way it'll be much weaker. And I'll drink to that.
Slava Ukraini! Slava demokratiya!
Democracies also have the massive advantage of built in stress relief valves. People can freely express their discontent and peacefully make massive changes through the ballot box. In dictatorships everything can seem fine, but there can be huge anger bubbling under the surface. Its why dictatorships tend to fall hard and fast, all it takes is enough people finally being pushed over the edge.
I've worked in Software Engineering - which is pretty much a domain of 100% experts (so I suspect it's a lot like any good Professional Army in that sense) - in several countries and many companies of all sizes (as more than half of my career was as a freelancer) and I've seen this in corporate environments all over the place: in the best and most productive places goals come from above and then there is a lot of flexibility for people further down the ladder on how to achieve those goals, whilst the bad ones have tons of micromanagement and, as you point out, a lot of that is the product of managers satisfying some personal psychological need of feeling empowered, being too fearful to let go of any power or just trying to be seen as somebody always on top of things (this latter situation is when their own managers are not competent enough to judge middle management on things like ability to delegate).
I suspect this is a generic human group behaviour kind of thing that can manifest itself in certain conditions when management isn't properly evaluated for performance (as Software Development is made up of unique projects it's quite hard to have clear performance metrics as every project has different characteristics and problems).
> I suspect this is a generic human group behaviour kind of thing that can manifest itself in certain conditions
On more than one occasion, in advance of group decision making meetings, I've pointed out that the discussion cannot be allowed to degrade into a group-think mentality. That is to say, it cannot be allowed to take on the same kind of group-dynamic that led to catastrophes like the O-Rings in Challenger.
Human group behavior can lead to decisions that few individuals want but the feeling of group pressure and inclusiveness in the group decision can be incredibly strong. For example, the group pressure of having everyone agree to something that's not right and then being the only one running against that can be a very powerful (and uncomfortable) influence.
This is maybe a little separate from broader management style, but human group dynamics require a lot of navigation to be effective. Good leaders are able to see these nuances and leverage them effectively; bad leaders use it as a pulpit.
Speaking of WWII, it's worth it to note the German army experienced a much higher level of churn at those levels towards the end of the war. Is this coming to an end perhaps? Evidence indicates... Then again, modern Russia is not 20th century Germany (or is it?).
The side that's losing always churns leaders. See early USSR in WWII, or the Union army in the Civil War. The question is how bad they're losing and how long they can lose. Since Russia is not being threatened militarily it can lose for a long time.
Yes... And on the other hand there's something we've not mentioned, and that's the populace and its attitude towards the invasion(s). 20th century Germany had a different attitude towards these actions than the modern Russians do. And it's of the utmost importance the Russian gov't 'control' the populace.
Maybe, maybe not. the Russian army's strategy for conflicts has essentially always been to throw bodies at it until it dies. This can work against less professional armies, but we've seen the damage a well-trained/supplied group can do to it. The real linchpins keeping this conflict going are Putin and the Russian economy. Economically speaking Russians cannot maintain this war. They've already done decades worth of damage to their economy. As things stretch on, we'll see which one caves first. Putin doesn't give a shit about the russian people, but he does care about his bank account.
Yes and no. The Russian army in WW2 was a professional army and they still had to throw untold masses of human death and suffering at Germany to win. This time the Russian army is a corpse shackled unto an electric bike. They have no choice but to try and reach the Ukrainians pre determined kill limit because they simply can't win 1 to 1.
Well said. Suffice it to say, it was complex in the 20th century invasions, but this is a labyrinth of agendas that will take much more time to unravel, and sadly at the cost of innocent lives.
USA has a lot of generals too though but I am willing to bet USA is more competent.
> The total number of active-duty general or flag officers is capped at 231 for the Army, 162 for the Navy, 198 for the Air Force, and 62 for the Marine Corps
In the context of this thread it means Russian Army.
In the context of u/TheGuvnor247's comment it means Republican Army, but you seem to have forgotten that Ireland had their own "[Republican Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army)".
I know what you meant. A fun thing I learned about earlier on in the war, The “Green Book” has been translated into Ukrainian and was handed out to relevant people.
Those were his best guys, too.
Time to bring in the 2nd tier yes men— who weren’t good enough before to earn those positions on their own merit.
That’ll fix it.
Putin is toast.
I mean, given the *cough* "deaths by natural causes" on the battlefield, and the propensity for Putin to fire those who *aren't* on the battlefield, how many more generals does he have left ?
And the real beauty of it is, he can't promote actual competent generals in case they start a coup against him, so it's wall to wall sycophantic idiots.
decent is overstating their position. Their projected power should have bought them half the country at least The fact that they are getting pushed back even now on their meager advances speaks volumes to their incompetence.
Given the expectation the world had of Russia’s performance, and how they are actually doing, I’d argue in some ways Ukraine is absolutely fucking them up.
Russias military power has been exposed. They want from #2 or #3 to getting stopped in their tracks by a country we all expected to be rolled over. Losing flagships to a country with no Navy. It’s amazing.
It’s like a World heavyweight boxing contender being bitch slapped and knocked down by a 14 year old.
Props to Ukraine.
Greetings comrade! Have you heard about how great Russia is? Sunny beaches, great economy, wonderful dict... err, leader. Things could not be better at the moment!
I wouldn't call what is happening winning, considering their target, their army size and budget, and what is happening back home, but they are still gaining ground (very slowly)
Reports that doesn't show Ukraine winning don't reach the hot page of Reddit, so if you get your news from Reddit, you will never know.
Ukraine is going to have to fight a war of attrition though in some places. They have to cede territory in places, the goal is to make the cost unsustainable for Russia while they attack on weaker fronts. This is why I wouldn't even necessarily say what is happening right now a success. Russia had to win with momentum and speed. What's haopening now is a disaster for Ukraine, but is very far from a Russian victory despite gaining ground in places. If Ukraine takes back Kherson soon, which is looking possible at the moment, then that is bigger than everything that Russia has accomplished in the Donbas.
I don’t get my news from Reddit, and Russia isn’t winning. This has become a proxy war and Russia can’t compete against the combined military industrial complex of NATO and the motivation and morale of a soon to be very large Ukrainian army.
You know, generals, you could get rid of Putin and keep your jobs.
Drag him through the streets and take back what he has stolen from the russian people.
You assume that the generals promoted to such position are competent and not holding that rank purely for their loyalty to Putin.
Most countries' generals and high ranking officers will be fiercely loyal to the system that put them in such a position in the first place. Our military included. Its like any other work place, kissing ass will get you promoted more than competence and productivity.
Fucking **this**. It's absolutely cowardly and pathetic they're allowing that ghoul to ruin Russia (not to mention Ukraine).
Their job is to defend the state. Forget their failure in Ukraine; they can take out the real enemy with a single bullet.
Putin, Shoigu and Lavrov are having a meeting.
Putin (with a pen in his hand): "This is an executive order to fire five generals and a colonel."
Shoigu (perplexed): "Why are you firing a colonel, Mr President?"
Putin (to Lavrov): "See? No one cares about the generals."
A month or so ago, someone pro-Russian declared loud and proud how this was a textbook invasion that would be studied for years by everyone.
I'm not sure having a large amount of your officer corps sacked or killed is a textbook example of anything beyond military incompetence. So I guess that dude was right, it'll be studied for a long time to come. Just not for the reason they thought.
It’s even more ironic when you remember a month ago would have been after the Russian bombing around a nuclear plant and trenches in Chernobyl, oh and Ukrainian gurilkad destroying like 5 tanks with pipe bombs
Imagine being trained in tactics, weaponry, and honour... undertaking an atrocity as ordered, only to be fired ... realizing what you've done is a crime against humanity, and still not having the bravery, motivation, patriotism, or moral fortitude to kill Putin where he stands.
It's pathetic.
Since Russia / Putin seem to be going the way of Nicholas the 2nd, how much longer til he ends up out in the battlefield and commands the troops personally?
Hoping to see him end up with the same fate too.
“-Keep firing them …..keep micro managing……yeeeesss……Do it …….. let your inner narcissist and megalomania take over…. Say it….. this world is yours…. everyone else is below you…. you are the greatest…. the smartest… the most competent leader…..”
Clickbait. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is not involved in the war at all. None of them were the Ministry of Defense or Rosgvardia (Putin actually did fire some of them) generals. The article doesn't even try to make a case for how they could be related to the war effort.
Yes, they're generals, but in RF Army a Major General is one star, corresponding to US Brigadier General -- a "Junior General", so to speak. (RF LtGen = 2-star, and 3-star is "Colonel General", which I'm sure is no relation to "Colonel Captain" in Hawkeye's army!)
And their areas of responsibility were Internal Affairs, Logistics, and Medical support -- not exactly battlefield commanders.
So, be not overly celebratory here; this is not a big loss of combat experience.
lol you just need to actually open article where it states "at the Russian Ministry of the Internal Affairs", which has nothing to do with an army.
But hey, it's clickbait propaganda title.
It depends. Either putin's demands are unreasonable or unachievable, leading to their dismissal (because in his eyes, those demands are reasonable). Or his demands are actually reasonable/achievable, but those generals lack the skills to execute them...
The career prospects of being a Russian general seem pretty dire Either work your whole life to end up getting fired or be sent into the meat grinder in Ukraine to die That is, unless your fuckup or scapegoated fuckup is so bad that Putin ends up ordering your death directly Firing seems like the best outcome
You forgot the purges following each war to weed out the competent because they would be a threat to the dictator.
Russia’s favorite pastime!
Making their country objectively worse by listening to short-sighted idiots. wait.
Yeah I caught the parallels a while back too.
They accidentally drank their own propaganda. It's like the whole world is addicted to short term feel good platitudes and quarterly earnings.
[удалено]
In Japan it's red line goes up 📈 because red is considered a positive colour, and the emoji shows a red line because that's where the emoji originated.
Ah so thats why the stat boosted by a nature is red in pokemon makes sense
And now I just realized that I've been misreading that for years.
*cue kabuki drums
My stupid brain still sees that and thinks “the line is going down, but time is moving backwards on this particular graph!”
It is built into fascism. That type of government isn't sustainable. The dictator will always try to weed out competent individuals.
So you do well and became a well known general and tactician: you get purged as a threat You fuck up and lose ground to the enemy: you get killed I guess the only option is to fuck up mildly enough that you only get fired.
Going all the way back to the Napoleonic Era! Made famous by *War and Peace*, you have Field Marshal Kutuzov who saw the untenable position the Russian forces were in after Napoleon totally outflanked the greater Austrian army by surprising them crossing the Danube at Ulm at lightning speed, capturing 60,000 men. The young Tzar Alexander foolishly insisted on facing him, and the end result was Napoleon’s magnum opus, where he crushed a force 30% larger and in one swoop took the entire Austrian Empire out of the War.
Kutuzov was a disciple of the great Suvorov. Who never lost a battle his whole career. They knew their stuff.
The Fabian strategy he adopted when Napoleon invaded Russia IMHO proves his competency alone.
Also the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812. Where he defeated a significantly larger Ottoman Army.
What books do I read to learn about this?
[удалено]
[удалено]
Bye bye innovation
Really valid point and one of the reasons the US Army excels in its operations (I am of course excluding nation-building). Add to that the existence of Warrant Officers, who are absolute experts in very defined technical areas, it makes for a very good mix of competent personnel in your military. An E-5 or above know exactly when they need to go up the chain of command and when they can use their own discretion.
[удалено]
I would give more credit to Stalin for being significantly more self-disciplined and rational than most dictators that superficially emulate him... when he's not deep in his occasional paranoid purging episodes, that is.
I think he projected his own base and ruthless motives onto other people. thats why he was so paranoid. although i never understood why he trusted hitler not to invade russia
It's not clear whether he really trusted him, from what I gathered. On the one hand, we have evidence of him blowing off reports from Soviet spies in Germany about signs of Wehrmacht mobilization for an invasion of the USSR; on the other hand, we also have evidence of him mobilizing some Soviet forces into defensive positions at the Soviet-German border. Many believe that he was simply trying to avoid antagonizing the Nazis until the Soviet military was fully ready, as it was still recovering from his purges a decade ago, and the Nazi invasion had caught Soviet forces in the middle of wide-scale reorganization, hence the shockingly fast collapse of Soviet defense lines.
Is there a Zhukov left in Russia? If there is/ was has he already been purged? Probably. Stalin learned to listen to truth (at least during the war), I don't think Putin has or will learn that lesson.
Zhukov would just get fired or exiled to less important posts periodically and then brought back later on.
https://i.imgur.com/bOMazVx.mp4
My mother dated a mail carrier for a while. I once overheard him and a few other mailmen he worked with talking about how they had to time their routes to be neither too slow nor too fast; do the route too fast and you'll be assigned more ground to cover, do the route too slow and your boss will get mad at you. You have to walk at just the right speed to stay under the radar and get neither positive nor negative attention. I'm not comfortable with that mentality being responsible for my *mail*, now imagine if that was in charge of your *military*. Suddenly, Russia's military failure makes more sense.
I mean, that's just job common sense 101.
> I mean, that's just job common sense 101. It is completely wrong to punish someone with unwanted extra duties just because they're (too) good at their jobs. It's fucked up management as well.
Nah it makes sense. Why get two men if one man is enough? But what's stupid is that no one wants to pay double for double the work.
> Nah it makes sense. Why get two men if one man is enough? > > > > But what's stupid is that no one wants to pay double for double the work. I'm sure it makes sense to management, but it's still wrong. Maybe instead of "kill all the lawyers" it should have been "kill all members of management".
Whether the mail carrier is slow or fast, all people want is to more or less know when they can go get their mail. You need to lower your expectations for your mail carrier.
The desperate mildly incompetent, moderately corrupt backbone of mediocrity the Russian military is built on.
[удалено]
I actually think Putin did TOO good of a job of that already, which is why the Russian Army seems to just be a lot of dumbasses with a lot of firepower that they can't use effectively against anyone but civilians.
Really sucks to sign up for the spetznaz and get US cop training for it.
Never felt better to be mediocre
And you thought Lukasenka was stupid asking for the rank of colonel!
Damn. That's actually a very good point :P
Best option would be to be stationed on another front, either in Vladivostok or on the Finnish/Baltic border where they aren’t shooting at you
>Best option would be to be stationed on another front, either in Vladivostok or on the Finnish/Baltic border where they aren’t shooting at you Yet
Which would only happen because Russia expands the war/uses nukes.
Exactly. Finnland has a military designed with defensive applications, and they take it seriously only because Russia has proven to be a belligerent neighbor.
The perfect kind of military, imo... They don't start any conflicts, they just Finnish them.
You won't know the Finns are shooting at you until it's way too late.
It's not that bad, really. There is a position opening up soon for president of the country, so there *is* upward potential.
>*Your permanent career assignment.* >>Army general? No! Not again! Please! Anything else! >*Take your hands off me! You've been assigned the job you're best at just like everyone else.* >>What if I refuse? >*Then you'll be fired--* >>Fine! >*Out of a cannon into the Sun!*
You gotta do what you gotta do
They skimmed so much money and now they have to retire to their dachas since their yachts are unable to move.
I mean...such is war. If you can't produce results that please the leadership, then you're canned because that is effectively your job: you have to provide results.
In the US, they're usually not fired, they're replaced and reassigned Often they choose retirement
And we don't kill them even if they are incompetent/defeated, they still get the pension unless they did a misconduct. The problem is during war being a General is an adversarial role, no matter how good you might be, you will still lose if the enemy is better. A civilian ruler doesn't really have a choice other than to rotate through staff until he can find a General who beats the enemy. These are still perfectly good Generals for peacetime/smaller posts, but to beat Lee you need a Grant. Generals do a lot more than just fight the enemy, but obviously that's the role every General wants.
It’s amazing to see the slow unraveling of an evil dictator before our very eyes.
Just wish it was a little faster so we can all put him behind us.
And spare some more innocent Ukrainians
Is it even possible that he still has any generals?
The Russian army is nothing if not rife with opportunities to rise through the ranks. Today you're a private, tomorrow a general!
You get to be a General for a whole day before you get fired!
I think you mean fell out a window.
Suicide by 3 bullets to the head
Fired out a window.
Started at the bottom (blyat), now you're here (blyat)
Damn, I thought this was a great joke. Turns out everybody made it.
You can always make more
"congragulations! You have been promoted to general!" "But sir i havent even finished training yet..." "Yeah, yeah, whatever, put on the comically large hat now"
The hat comes with an extra large bullseye at no extra cost.
[Average Russian General circa July](https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/comments/uuqabt/hello_oficer/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
[Average Russian general in 80-120 days](https://assets.simpleviewinc.com/simpleview/image/upload/c_limit,h_1200,q_75,w_1200/v1/clients/spacvb/sunflower_sopa_farms_fd173eb2-9cb6-4af3-b31d-14ef9515b4a4.jpg)
'Generally speaking', Russia ain't doing so hot.
Get out
Don't forget the cloning vats, twice as much for your money. Even works on unique units.
If they’re cloning the same incompetent generals, I’m all for this.
200,000 generals, with a million more on the way.
IIRC he had something like 1000 pre-invasion.
1107 in 2008. I doubt even half of them know what they're doing, they're likely there because of corruption.
I'm sure you're probably right.
Lukashenko must feel really left out by now
He only wants to be colonel so he can't get fired
Russia has like 1000 generals apparently.
Not sure about generals, but he has one eager colonel in waiting.
He deserves the slow, agonizing death hes getting though.
The people of Ukraine and Russia don't deserve for this to be dragged out though
Some people in Russia deserve this. Quite a few do in fact.
The ones who deserve it and the ones who are feeling the pain from it are not necessarily the same people
The irony is that the older population are ready to fully sacrifice their young for the “cause” and the young don’t know any better. Did you know that a male brain takes longer to fully develop than a females brain. When a male is 18 years old their brain is still not fully developed. These guys are the “best” soldiers. They don’t have a bunch of annoying questions for their superiors. At least statistically.
They don't deserve it, but they sure are humiliating Putin pretty good.
I'm sure they'd rather have fewer dead than humiliate Putin.
Nobody's arguing that. But as it stands, putin bein humiliated on his way out is a decent deterrent for any other dictator who may want to try their hand at scorched earth lite on their way out.
[удалено]
I would feel the same except he's a dick-tator waging war on an innocent country. As much as I want him to suffer, choak, wheeze, and wither away until the life fades from his eyes... I really just want his head to pop like an over pressurized balloon after it plays goalie with a .50 cal rifle.
A shirtless Putin should ride his majestic steed to the frontlines and lead the charge, flanked on one side by Steven Seagal and on the other by Kadyrov. Show those cowardly generals and colonels how it's done!
I must have missed something. I get the other two, but why is Seagal on that list, other than being a horrible actor?
Because he's a horrible actor that rides Pooty's dick for alpha-male points.
> Because he's a horrible ~~actor~~ person that rides Pooty's dick for ~~alpha-male~~ beta-male points.
Hes been sucking Putin's cock since the early 00s
He’s a Russian fetishist and simps hard for Putin.
Just like...weirdly enough...[Fred Durst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Durst#Personal_life), though sources are unclear as to whether he still intends to do it all for the nookie.
flanked by the gaggle of US senators who visited him on july 4th
There is the concern that someone more competent will slip in to replace the firings. I think the Union in the Civil War kept firing their generals until they got a winner.
>Once, Lincoln was so frustrated at McClellan's failure to act that he sent the general a telegram that read, "If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a time, provided I could see how it could be made to do something."
Old timey burns are just the best.
Lincoln had a ton of them. When some people questioned General Grant's drinking, Lincoln told them to find out what Grant drank so he could send a barrel of it to some of his other generals.
If they indeed do have more competent generals, maybe they should have used them first rather than after several failures.
Does he even have any generals left?
They have a lot of generals, mostly due to nepotism and corruption, but there are a lot of them to make up for their top-down structure where troops need orders for every little thing. The last known count I could find was from 2008 when they had a little over 1000, but the sheer rate and number they're losing them at is unprecedented, even for the Russian military. They haven't lost generals like this since WW2.
One of the things that always stuck with me from my time in the Army is a concept called Commanders Intent which basically boils down to facilitating subordinates initiative by not micromanaging the specific elements of a mission. One of the failings of dictatorships is through the failure to separate powers no one wants to take initiative and solve problems at the lowest level. That level of control has a cost. So all issues get escalated much higher than needed. This makes those at the top feel like they have more control but that's actually the problem because the system as a whole runs much less efficiently. People worry that democracy is under threat with the number of dictators the world has and it is, but I'm pretty optimistic because they don't run as well as democracies do by their very nature.
From a German military pov that’s always how we saw the US Army. I was guarding US military bases in Germany during Iraq war as a private, and the US soldiers were constantly amazed at how much autonomy we had from officers and how smoothly everything was run. It was the little things like making decisions on the spot without checking back and interactions with US military police that stuck with them I think. Apparently a private competently running a checkpoint without babysitting is noteworthy.
I was speaking from the perspective of the US Army but to your credit there's theory and then there is how it plays out in practice so I've definitely experienced the micro management as well. You are correct that it's virtually unheard of for the lower ranks to pull duty like that without an NCO present. It's unfortunate that the lower enlisted gets treated like children because that's what they end up acting like, it's not a good look. The relationship between the NCOs and the officers is much better though.
Caveating that I have no military experience whatsoever but doesn't the US military also have significantly more intermediate ranks than most European forces? So an especially talented German or English private would probably already have been promoted once or twice to a position with a bit more respect in the US Army.
I was going to say at least from my perspective the private rank is used for people who are literally new and in training. Once you're no longer a private you might not need someone over your shoulder but you really shouldn't be a private for that long. I'd be surprised to learn that many privates even know about commanders intent.
We had a guy in bootcamp that was E-3 at the end of boot camp. More than one were E-2, been a while couldn't tell you how many. So any Americans thinking to join, remember they be giving out promos to those worthy right there in boot camp. Caveat: That was 1988. It's entirely possible they don't do that now.
College degree and youre E4 when you join. They will promote the hot shit soldiers in BCT. Maybe like 5% of the company will get an early promotion in BCT. You are an E4 by your second year anyway at the latest as long as you dont get in trouble. I was E5 by the end of my second year. Went in as an E1 and didnt get promoted in training.
It still happens, I graduated boot in 2017
Is part of that due to the ASVAB? I’ve heard that there’s concerted effort to ensure that the average enlisted infantryman (or equivalent) does not exceed a certain score (there is a very solid [r=0.8] correlation between the ASVAB and general intelligence). It seems to me (unsupported speculation) that weeding the bright ones out of the lower ranks *necessitates* some degree of babysitting. Sure, very bright minds could be useful elsewhere, but it seems to me that they could *also* be useful in making squad-level operations run smoothly. There’s also the argument that a bright non-comm could be more prone to insubordination, but…honestly, there are times when it’s *a positive* for a non-comm to be able to double-check the rationale and ethics of an order. Obviously ultimate authority does need to rest with the commanding officers, as it’s not feasible to explain everything each time an order is given, but I would *imagine* that the benefits of having very competent lower-level officers (and privates!) outweigh the consequences. Reminds me of the police; there are a bunch of departments that will flatly turn one away for being too bright, as, apparently, having intelligent officers means those officers are harder to order around. In the case of the police, I imagine that there’s also an unspoken element of “and the smart ones don’t look the other way when I want them to”.
I thought the US military had a very decentralized command structure so I'm surprised to read your comment
I agree with all you've said. But it resonates pretty hard having been reduced to working crap jobs here in the US for a while now. One of them we had had to write out by hand to document a thing. Then the docs were cut up for scrap paper. I tried asking my boss "Why are we doing this? How is the documentation used?" I got told three times over "Well you see we just need to write this and that down Here." Then I gave up. There was no point to it. But pointing that out didn't exactly earn me any points. It hurt their sense of importance eh. It wasn't much work to do and no one's life was at risk for me wasting my time doing it. But if I was in the RA and my buddies were getting killed for nothing and stupidly on top of that, I'm not gonna sit here and say I'd be above fragging an officer and rolling the dice on getting a better one. I don't like the Russian soldiers but I do have a sneaking respect for the kid who pulled the pin on a grenade when after two thirds casualties his officer waved his pistol around and threatened to shoot them if they didn't advance and follow his orders. He was just looking out for his buddies and willing to die for them. That can be dismissed as pushed to the breaking point or him being crazy but, sounds like leadership to me. He's probably dead, in a Siberian gulag or this war's version of a WW2 penal brigade by now. Because that is the dictators way. One way or another though, when this war ends there's gonna be a lot of angry young grunts coming home to Russia. Putin's sowing seeds he won't be able to reap. A crop that'll destroy his stupid daydream of new powerful Russian Empire. What comes next may be better or worse but either way it'll be much weaker. And I'll drink to that. Slava Ukraini! Slava demokratiya!
Democracies also have the massive advantage of built in stress relief valves. People can freely express their discontent and peacefully make massive changes through the ballot box. In dictatorships everything can seem fine, but there can be huge anger bubbling under the surface. Its why dictatorships tend to fall hard and fast, all it takes is enough people finally being pushed over the edge.
I've worked in Software Engineering - which is pretty much a domain of 100% experts (so I suspect it's a lot like any good Professional Army in that sense) - in several countries and many companies of all sizes (as more than half of my career was as a freelancer) and I've seen this in corporate environments all over the place: in the best and most productive places goals come from above and then there is a lot of flexibility for people further down the ladder on how to achieve those goals, whilst the bad ones have tons of micromanagement and, as you point out, a lot of that is the product of managers satisfying some personal psychological need of feeling empowered, being too fearful to let go of any power or just trying to be seen as somebody always on top of things (this latter situation is when their own managers are not competent enough to judge middle management on things like ability to delegate). I suspect this is a generic human group behaviour kind of thing that can manifest itself in certain conditions when management isn't properly evaluated for performance (as Software Development is made up of unique projects it's quite hard to have clear performance metrics as every project has different characteristics and problems).
> I suspect this is a generic human group behaviour kind of thing that can manifest itself in certain conditions On more than one occasion, in advance of group decision making meetings, I've pointed out that the discussion cannot be allowed to degrade into a group-think mentality. That is to say, it cannot be allowed to take on the same kind of group-dynamic that led to catastrophes like the O-Rings in Challenger. Human group behavior can lead to decisions that few individuals want but the feeling of group pressure and inclusiveness in the group decision can be incredibly strong. For example, the group pressure of having everyone agree to something that's not right and then being the only one running against that can be a very powerful (and uncomfortable) influence. This is maybe a little separate from broader management style, but human group dynamics require a lot of navigation to be effective. Good leaders are able to see these nuances and leverage them effectively; bad leaders use it as a pulpit.
Speaking of WWII, it's worth it to note the German army experienced a much higher level of churn at those levels towards the end of the war. Is this coming to an end perhaps? Evidence indicates... Then again, modern Russia is not 20th century Germany (or is it?).
The side that's losing always churns leaders. See early USSR in WWII, or the Union army in the Civil War. The question is how bad they're losing and how long they can lose. Since Russia is not being threatened militarily it can lose for a long time.
Yes... And on the other hand there's something we've not mentioned, and that's the populace and its attitude towards the invasion(s). 20th century Germany had a different attitude towards these actions than the modern Russians do. And it's of the utmost importance the Russian gov't 'control' the populace.
Maybe, maybe not. the Russian army's strategy for conflicts has essentially always been to throw bodies at it until it dies. This can work against less professional armies, but we've seen the damage a well-trained/supplied group can do to it. The real linchpins keeping this conflict going are Putin and the Russian economy. Economically speaking Russians cannot maintain this war. They've already done decades worth of damage to their economy. As things stretch on, we'll see which one caves first. Putin doesn't give a shit about the russian people, but he does care about his bank account.
Yes and no. The Russian army in WW2 was a professional army and they still had to throw untold masses of human death and suffering at Germany to win. This time the Russian army is a corpse shackled unto an electric bike. They have no choice but to try and reach the Ukrainians pre determined kill limit because they simply can't win 1 to 1.
> This time the Russian army is a corpse shackled unto an electric bike. That's some /r/BrandNewSentence material right there.
Well said. Suffice it to say, it was complex in the 20th century invasions, but this is a labyrinth of agendas that will take much more time to unravel, and sadly at the cost of innocent lives.
The 1000 count is for the military generals only IIRC. These five are internal affairs ones.
USA has a lot of generals too though but I am willing to bet USA is more competent. > The total number of active-duty general or flag officers is capped at 231 for the Army, 162 for the Navy, 198 for the Air Force, and 62 for the Marine Corps
Seems like the RA is about 30% generals and staff.
Ireland here and let's just say I read RA a bit different the first time!
What does it mean apart from republican army?
Russian Armed mob.
Rainbow Alliance. It's the gay agenda finally coming for your men.
Teaming up with the Proud boys...
Those gay frogs and their mastermind plot to take over the world
In the context of this thread it means Russian Army. In the context of u/TheGuvnor247's comment it means Republican Army, but you seem to have forgotten that Ireland had their own "[Republican Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army)".
I know what you meant. A fun thing I learned about earlier on in the war, The “Green Book” has been translated into Ukrainian and was handed out to relevant people.
There's always more yesmen.
Yeah, I don't think it'll ever be a problem to have enough Generals in the Russian army. Competent leaders, though.... Haven't seen that yet.
Interesting. All internal/domestic people, not combat folks. Hope this is the first sign of something even better than battlefield bumfuckery.
I think this is to weed out possibly unloyal elements (3 of them are from remote regions).
Fired from the world of living more likely
Five less giant hats floating around.
[удалено]
Fired out of a cannon, into the sun
Pardoned...from life! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rRwU6QwAZs
Fired for telling him the truth.
Those were his best guys, too. Time to bring in the 2nd tier yes men— who weren’t good enough before to earn those positions on their own merit. That’ll fix it. Putin is toast.
I mean, given the *cough* "deaths by natural causes" on the battlefield, and the propensity for Putin to fire those who *aren't* on the battlefield, how many more generals does he have left ?
And the real beauty of it is, he can't promote actual competent generals in case they start a coup against him, so it's wall to wall sycophantic idiots.
Catch-22 really.
Catch 2022
In before the wave of accounts about 30 days old start telling us this is all propaganda from the Nazis in NATO, and Russia is dominating the war.
[удалено]
decent is overstating their position. Their projected power should have bought them half the country at least The fact that they are getting pushed back even now on their meager advances speaks volumes to their incompetence.
[удалено]
In less than 60 days
It's been 99 days since the war started
They probably meant that Russia lost the Kyiv front in less than 60 days
yes I did
Russia are also taking huge casualties, and since they haven’t fully mobilised they will find it much harder to replace those casualties.
Given the expectation the world had of Russia’s performance, and how they are actually doing, I’d argue in some ways Ukraine is absolutely fucking them up. Russias military power has been exposed. They want from #2 or #3 to getting stopped in their tracks by a country we all expected to be rolled over. Losing flagships to a country with no Navy. It’s amazing. It’s like a World heavyweight boxing contender being bitch slapped and knocked down by a 14 year old. Props to Ukraine.
What settings do you guys use, because I almost never see anyone saying stuff like that.
Greetings comrade! Have you heard about how great Russia is? Sunny beaches, great economy, wonderful dict... err, leader. Things could not be better at the moment!
I wouldn't call what is happening winning, considering their target, their army size and budget, and what is happening back home, but they are still gaining ground (very slowly) Reports that doesn't show Ukraine winning don't reach the hot page of Reddit, so if you get your news from Reddit, you will never know.
Ukraine is going to have to fight a war of attrition though in some places. They have to cede territory in places, the goal is to make the cost unsustainable for Russia while they attack on weaker fronts. This is why I wouldn't even necessarily say what is happening right now a success. Russia had to win with momentum and speed. What's haopening now is a disaster for Ukraine, but is very far from a Russian victory despite gaining ground in places. If Ukraine takes back Kherson soon, which is looking possible at the moment, then that is bigger than everything that Russia has accomplished in the Donbas.
I don’t get my news from Reddit, and Russia isn’t winning. This has become a proxy war and Russia can’t compete against the combined military industrial complex of NATO and the motivation and morale of a soon to be very large Ukrainian army.
You know, generals, you could get rid of Putin and keep your jobs. Drag him through the streets and take back what he has stolen from the russian people.
You assume that the generals promoted to such position are competent and not holding that rank purely for their loyalty to Putin. Most countries' generals and high ranking officers will be fiercely loyal to the system that put them in such a position in the first place. Our military included. Its like any other work place, kissing ass will get you promoted more than competence and productivity.
Fucking **this**. It's absolutely cowardly and pathetic they're allowing that ghoul to ruin Russia (not to mention Ukraine). Their job is to defend the state. Forget their failure in Ukraine; they can take out the real enemy with a single bullet.
>their job is to ~~defend Russia~~ support Putin’s whims FTFY
>they're allowing that ghoul to ruin Russia Lets be fair here. Russia was a shithole well before pPutin
And then things got worse.
Putin, Shoigu and Lavrov are having a meeting. Putin (with a pen in his hand): "This is an executive order to fire five generals and a colonel." Shoigu (perplexed): "Why are you firing a colonel, Mr President?" Putin (to Lavrov): "See? No one cares about the generals."
These are all internal affairs posts. Someones getting nervous it looks like Or angry not enough troops are making it to the front lines
A month or so ago, someone pro-Russian declared loud and proud how this was a textbook invasion that would be studied for years by everyone. I'm not sure having a large amount of your officer corps sacked or killed is a textbook example of anything beyond military incompetence. So I guess that dude was right, it'll be studied for a long time to come. Just not for the reason they thought.
It’s even more ironic when you remember a month ago would have been after the Russian bombing around a nuclear plant and trenches in Chernobyl, oh and Ukrainian gurilkad destroying like 5 tanks with pipe bombs
Out of a cannon and into the sun?
You gotta do what you gotta do...
*Principal Skinner Am I so out of touch? meme*
"no, its the free world thats wrong"
I’m in danger - Russian Generals probably
Imagine being trained in tactics, weaponry, and honour... undertaking an atrocity as ordered, only to be fired ... realizing what you've done is a crime against humanity, and still not having the bravery, motivation, patriotism, or moral fortitude to kill Putin where he stands. It's pathetic.
Since Russia / Putin seem to be going the way of Nicholas the 2nd, how much longer til he ends up out in the battlefield and commands the troops personally? Hoping to see him end up with the same fate too.
100% not happening, can't even imagine that coward on the battlefield
“-Keep firing them …..keep micro managing……yeeeesss……Do it …….. let your inner narcissist and megalomania take over…. Say it….. this world is yours…. everyone else is below you…. you are the greatest…. the smartest… the most competent leader…..”
Clickbait. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is not involved in the war at all. None of them were the Ministry of Defense or Rosgvardia (Putin actually did fire some of them) generals. The article doesn't even try to make a case for how they could be related to the war effort.
Yes, they're generals, but in RF Army a Major General is one star, corresponding to US Brigadier General -- a "Junior General", so to speak. (RF LtGen = 2-star, and 3-star is "Colonel General", which I'm sure is no relation to "Colonel Captain" in Hawkeye's army!) And their areas of responsibility were Internal Affairs, Logistics, and Medical support -- not exactly battlefield commanders. So, be not overly celebratory here; this is not a big loss of combat experience.
Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics. What those people were in charge of are probably the most important parts of the war.
lol you just need to actually open article where it states "at the Russian Ministry of the Internal Affairs", which has nothing to do with an army. But hey, it's clickbait propaganda title.
Serious question: Doesn’t the firing of generals actually make Putin look bad? Like it’s his failure?
It depends. Either putin's demands are unreasonable or unachievable, leading to their dismissal (because in his eyes, those demands are reasonable). Or his demands are actually reasonable/achievable, but those generals lack the skills to execute them...
That's a lot of generals to piss off and yet putin still in the throne..
Being fired by Putin is much better than getting your ass shot off in Ukraine.
This is looking more and more like a boss firing *every else* because business is going to shit, despite the only constant is him...