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The way the Russian government is handling the war in Ukraine strongly reminds me of the Kursk incident.
As a brief reminder, the incident featured a Russian nuclear submarine that experienced a fatal malfunction: the explosion of a torpedo that then triggered more of its torpedoes to explode. The blasts killed most of the crew and the few that remained alive sheltered in the tail end of the submarine, which dropped to the bottom of the Barents Sea. The incident received international attention in August 2000 because of a seemingly endless series of mishaps during the rescue operation:
the Russian Navy was accustomed to frequent comm equipment failure so it didn't take any action when the Kursk failed to check in.
the Navy's rescue ship was a former lumber ship and could only operate in calm seas.
the admiral in charge of the military exercise that Kursk was part of informed the Kremlin of the incident about 12 hours after it it took place.
the next day, the same admiral informed the Russian press that the exercise had been a resounding success.
one of two Russian submersibles used for the rescue operation collided with the Kursk and required repairs.
the second submersible was used but failed to locate the Kursk.
the next day, the first submersible was fit for action and sent to attach itself to the Kursk, but it took too long and it ran out of batteries. There were no spares, so the rescue operation had to be put on hold until the batteries was recharged. Meanwhile, the weather got worse and the operation had to be held off until the next day.
the first official report of the incident to the Russian media stated that the Kursk had experience a minor technical difficulty.
Russian officials first stated that the problem was a result of a collision, most likely with a WWII mine.
the second submersible was damaged again while being it was being prepared to be lowered for another mission.
the second submersible was repaired and made two attempts to attach itself to the Kursk, but both failed. As it was being picked up by its ship, it was seriously damaged.
a few days into the operation, the Navy was reporting that from the evidence it had obtained there had been no explosions on the Kursk. (This despite the first two explosions being serious enough to be heard by other vessels taking part in the training as well as seismograph sensors operated by multiple other countries.)
initial offers of international assistance were denied. Only 5 days later were they accepted.
another admiral of the Russian Navy stated that the incident occurred because of a collision with a NATO submarine. Other officers backed up this report, although no evidence was produced. They kept to this line for nearly two years after the incident.
after the wreck was lifted from the sea floor and transported to Russia, an investigation found the incident to have been caused by (get ready) torpedo explosions. It is suspected the root cause was a faulty weld. Also, the automated recording system was disabled along with the rescue bouy.
(For others like me who accidents fascinating I recommend reading the full wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_submarine_disaster. Spoiler alert: the remaining Kursk sailors died within a few hours of the accident. The wikipedia entry contains some quite disturbing details of how they died, eg. "(..) abdomen was burned by acid, exposing the internal organs, and the flesh on his head and neck was removed by the explosion.")
What stands out to me here, just from the perspective of incident response is:
ineffective incident management. Awful communications. General lack of understanding of the problem at hand, what to do, etc.
ineffective rescue equipment. Outdated, unmaintained.
numerous human errors: the rescue submersibles were damaged multiple times by their operators!
lack of transparency with public. Numerous false statements eg. calling the incident a "minor malfunction."
blameful-postmortem. Blaming WW2 mine, at first, then trying to sell a completely made up story about a collision with a NATO vessel.
From where I stand, I see all of these patterns replaying themselves in the current war in Ukraine.
Frequent painful logistics problems. Problems with supplying front-line troops with food, water, even adequate clothing.
Ineffective, outdated, unmaintained weapons and vehicles. No air superiority. Foreign-made drones that don't work well in cold weather. Not being able to defend bases hundreds of kilometers inside the motherland from a suicide drone strike. The infamous analysis of truck tires from the beginning of the conflict showing that regular maintenance was not done.
Bad management. Awful communications. Changes in leadership. Risking and losing high-value equipment like the Moskva.
Lack of transparency. 3 day "special operation" that has been going on for 300+ days. The need to mobilize 300k civilian men to fight what was supposed to be a simple little conflict.
Lies. Painting the conflict as fight against nazism, Satan, or NATO (ironic to pull the NATO card again after the "collision with NATO submarine" during the Kursk incident). Even starting the conflict by staging a military exercise that, allegedly, even the participants didn't know was the first step in the war. Reassuring the Russian public that Russia will bear no economic pain from being cut off from various trade systems. Repeated threats of using nuclear weapons. Threatening Finland and Sweden.
Note that I'm not touching on the moral aspects of the war, just on the operational ones. In both of these stories, the salient patterns appear to be corruption, inadequate training, lack of management, and constant lying and bluffing that serves to create internal confusion.
If these patterns reflect reality, then the future doesn't look good for the Russian government. I can see two probable ways this can end: a long, drawn burn that ends in the eventual "suffocation"--lack of basic resources to continue the conflict--or a quick, short ending meant to stop the hemorrhaging of resources on a futile conflict. Either is catastrophic or nearly catastrophic for the Federation.
It is noteworthy that a private military company (Wagner) is doing a lot of the difficult front fighting, and the normal Russian army is just following later.
https://twitter.com/MihajlovicMike/status/1612936331587649537
Is the private sector also in war more efficient than state bureaucratic militaries?
Executive Outcomes was a lot better at fighting than the state militaries of Angola or Sierra Leone. That said, state armed forces usually make up for being inefficient by being able to marshal vastly more resources than any company could dream of and it's rare that a PMC/political paramilitary is bestowed enough resources to really compete on a major battlefield (the Waffen SS is the example of this).
Also, it could be the case that both Executive Outcomes and Wagner derive much of their effectiveness from being able to pick from manpower/leadership pools that are either elite (veterans, often of special forces), motivated (Right Sector militants like the Azov Battalion or their copycats on the Russian side like the Sparta Battalion) or expendable (Wagner's convicts) instead of having to start with average raw civilians.
It'll be interesting to see if Wagner can leverage its competencies (I'd caution that PR may be one of these. Prigozhin seems to at least know the value of a photo shoot.) into getting a bigger share of the Russian military resource pie and what they can do with it.
There's also a matter of the difference between 'efficiency' and 'completeness.' In high-risk/high-cost endeavors, multiple measures of efficiency are meaningless if compromised by a lack of completeness to things outside the scope of the efficiency matrix. 'Efficiency' might be measured in metrics like 'ability to fire X rounds in Y time at Z range,' but completeness might be other factors as 'is there an entirely different unit capable of providing protection to allow the asset to live.' In the Moskva case, the Moskva was likely a very efficient cruise missile launcher right up until the point it sank for lack of a complete air defense concept being implemented.
This is a function of resources, but it's also the sort of resources that differentiate efficient private actors- who focus on cutting costs and unnecessary expenditures- to effective government actors, who use those resources for things other than the primary mission but which support other purposes in aggregate. Even if the governments were to chase 'efficiency' in the private-sense, there's no guarantee that the efficiency won't compromise the non-evaluated metrics and make things more-efficient-but-worse.
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