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Comment by throw__away7391 | Hacker News Reader

I just had a thought--who are the VKS pilots? This is a pretty kick-ass and prestigious job. Have these positions been handed out to the favored sons of well-connected families, as is typical of many things in Russia? If so, could this be contributing to a reluctance to commit them to a conflict that is not going well against relatively well-equipped adversary?

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Sounds plausible. Also in a kleptocracy there likely are opportunities to siphon loads of cash away from military programs and short-change equipment and training needs. An oligarch might think, "Russia will not need to wage a sophisticated air campaign any time in the next fifty years! The slop trough buffet is open!"

There was already evidence of that. Apparently Russian troops were selling diesel fuel to the locals while they were waiting at the border before the war had started.

> "Russia will not need to wage a sophisticated air campaign any time in the next fifty years! The slop trough buffet is open!"

Most people at this level don't have a soul or patriotic feelings, so the internal dialog is probably: "I don't give a shit what happens to Russia, I'll find another country to feed onto".

I was not born in Russia, but in some Eastern European country. In my country, during the Communism, and the decade after (and maybe even to this day, but I haven't lived there since 2000), the competition to become a jet fighter pilot was absolutely insane. But that was because the kids just liked jet fighters, (some probably from watching Top Gun). However, it was known that lots of the pilots died in crashes (e.g. [1]). It was also rumored that the pilots ended up having reproductive problems because of radiation from its radar, or something. It's possible that this was an unsubstantiated urban legend, but the rumor existed, and that's what mattered. Given this, I doubt the sons of the well-connected big shots were really flocking to become pilots. Nowadays, those sons most likely prefer to go and study in Switzerland, or the UK or the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doru_Davidovici

Pretty underwhelming to see a spitball theory on Russia regarding nepotism/corruption based on it being “typical of many things in Russia”—nothing specific to the military or the air force, just a blank cheque that can be used to interrogate anything.

Underwhelming, sure, but likely true.

Genuine question: have you spent anytime living there? If so where/how long?

No time.

Career of Shoigu is a great indicator of how things are going in Russian military.

Russia has a long history of corruption going back to the time when the princes under the Mongol Empire beginning in 1219 were forced to collect taxes on their behalf. Unlike in the rest of Europe and China, the princes during this time ended up controlling large regions relatively uncontested, responsible only for extracting maximum output from their vassal and putting little pressure on their power structures to be efficient to outside threats. This structure has been recreated in each successive iteration of Russia government, up to the oligarchs today. Or so goes the general historical consensus.

Russia ranked 136th out of 180 in Transparency International's corruption index.

You just used the open European Plains/Steppes to explain a supposedly incompetent Russian air force, specifically your spitball theory about incompetent VKS pilots. A more humble person might just go back about thirty years and use the post-Soviet oligarch looting in order to explain the corruption and in turn the VKS pilots... only relatively more humble, but still.

Are you sure that you don’t want to rein in the grand narration just a little bit?

Not incompetent, but not expendable, as in military command feeling it is better for their careers if they don't send powerful people's kids to die.

Why are you so hung up on defending Russia?

On second thought, this theory of complacency on the European Plains makes even less sense when one considers the invasions that Russia/Soviet Union had to fight back in the 20th century. The border with the rest of Europe is hell to defend—it’s basically anti-Switzerland.

And in that light the historical line that is being drawn makes even less sense.

> Why are you so hung up on defending Russia?

It’s revealing that you frame or interpret this discussion as being about either attacking or defending Russia. Why is it/ought it to be about that?

It's the typical "you're either with us or against us" mentality that is very common nowadays. It's very difficult to be listened to when you have a reasonable position (on any subject really).

I believe this mentality is created by the massive propaganda we have been subjected to since a couple decades.

There is a war taking place, that tends to polarize opinion more than usual, whether in the last couple of decades, or centuries.

So, join the polarization in defeat because everyone is doing it? This is exactly when we need to be more cognizant of jingoism and the likely encroachment upon freedom and positing of dubious facts that the government and institutions will manufacture while the population is distracted not paying close attention.

No, not "with us or against us" just genuinely surprised at the level of anger being expressed by avgcorrection to what to me seemed pretty innocuous speculation: I think it's possible that the status of the VKS pilots is contributing to a reluctance to fly them into danger for political reasons.

Russia is famous for corruption, seems a weird thing to defend. Even in the US there are at least some well-connected sons getting seats in fighter jets, and "paid drivers" have existed in Formula 1 since forever. Doesn't seem too far fetched, but right or wrong hardly worth any kind of attack. Additionally I never said the pilots would be incompetent--in my experience when people start responding to accusations that were never made, something else is going on in their head.

For what it's worth, I like Russia. I'm ethnically from a former Soviet state and although I have very little cultural connection to it, whenever I meet Russians anywhere in the world they've been instantly friendly towards me just based on my name. Even with this happening I hope that someday within my lifetime EU/Russian relation can be fully normalized.

You are getting very defensive just because you got some pushback against your Mongolian Empire era-based theory.

Lol, not my theory, stolen from a historian's podcast on the origins and history of totalitarianism in Russia.

You really seem like you'd just be tons of fun at parties.

You are right to zoom in. But the basic culture abd repeat pattern of Russia and chinese empire is astonishing as well. It might not be used to explain Air Force but the general picture is still there.

For this round, expanding an empire just be force is odd, except for Mongolian empire. Usually you start with soft bit. Seems this round is very Mongolian.

This is difficult to read.

Corruption is how Putin obtained and maintains order. It is regarded as a feature of Russian governance, but is likely to fail it in the case of actually providing the services a government is expected to. Why not the military as well?

Why not the military as well? Because an autocrat is directly served by having a strong military? This should not need to be explained. An autocrat doesn’t have to care about corruption in the school system or the Department of Motor Vehicles, but he has good reason to care about corruption and incompetence in his military, just from a purely self-serving perspective.

Only if the military aren't likely to pull a coup - look at Turkey, seems like a dictator getting too big for their boots and then knocked back by the military happens every decade or so there?

The political elites of the military come from the same ranks as those for corrupt other areas of life.

Soldiers in the armed forces, in any interaction outside of it, face corruption every day: semi-official bribe lists with local police forces, bribes for administrative procedures, medical and so on.

In corrupt societies, it is hard to opt out of bribery since “market” forces balance out on the assumption that bribe giver can finance them partially through bribe taking. Cutting one leg off the trade makes it fail.

I think it’s naive to believe you can build an island of meritocracy surrounded from all sides by a corrupt system.

This is a long video but it explains in detail where OPs assertion is coming from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw

Thanks but it's a one hour video in Finish! Subtitles are available but I don't know if they're good quality. I probably could read the thing in 20 minutes if I could extract the subtitles.

Do you have a link on an article that I could put though deepl?

I usually use YCS [1] to extract subtitles though ypu may want to remove the timestamps before translation.

1. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ycs-youtube-commen...

Thanks, at the time I didn't think about youtube-dl but of course it has args for that :)

youtube-dl --write-sub --sub-lang en --skip-download

I translated the subtitles with deepl, it made for a fascinating read!

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