Invasion Failing Because Russian Intel Embezzled Billions Intended for Bribes?
thelowdownblog.com
thelowdownblog.com
Remember how putín told the commandos they'd be welcomed by Ukraine? Makes a lot more sense in this light.
No air domination plans? Russians weren't expecting any real resistance..
What they didn't expect is resistance. To date, externally leveraged coup have generally won. They didn't expect popular support for opposition in place.
You're right to air domination. They obviously expected to fly in to the civil airports and waltz in. Telling the conscripts women would shower them with flowers and kisses was just to pacify the innocents. Once the doors open, things changed.
I tend to a different view: He knows about the embezzlement and is complicit in it. He just thought that irrespective, he would win in 72 hours. Once it became obvious he wouldn't win in 72 hours he had to move to a different strategy, but it doesn't end the war, or save lives. Again, he's not un-aware of things on the ground within the limits of what higher command are told. He can read any western media he likes, and to believe he isn't aware of the other feed of intel is to seriously under-rate how things work.
So now to bribes: Does anyone think that any war of this nature has succeeded purely by undermining the authority of the opposition by bribes? It helps motivate, but I don't think it can explain things. Dark, off-book money always leaks, the final target never gets 100% of the "moscow gold" sent down the pipeline. Anyone who thinks bribers are un-aware of the road tax on illegal money has never experienced illegal money flows.
TL;DR Putin is not unware of the state of battle, or preparedness of his troops. Bribes alone wouldn't have made it work, magically.
The alternative, is to think he's a well meaning fool. Obviously it is a continuum and between pure evil and pure genius, there's room for an argument.
I tend to think Putin has skills, and information. I think he's making socially destructive choices, in a complex situation. I don't think Hanlon's razor applies.
Further, a logic argument: if the embezzlement is systematic inside the Russian state, and has been for years, how can Putin not be aware of it, and the complicity in his direct reports in subverting the bribe flows?
I think it is much more likely he looks to this as off-book performance/KPI pay.
It's possible he's in a situation where he literally cannot buy honesty, and has no good substitute for it, so he just has to believe lies and make mistakes. How many lies and at what levels? I dunno.. but how would he know either? I think we take professionals being trustworthy for granted in the US, but really that property depends on incentives being aligned just right. I mean, look at the FBI's vetting process and its emphasis on financial entaglements- I think it's like that for a reason.
Certainly I agree he would tend to believe his paid-for feed over the one he can tune into freely. I have been reading about Sorge, and the extent to which the centre refused to believe the edge operatives telling them about German intentions is just .. insane. So I see a strong parallel there. If you get enough of your yesmen saying "they are lying" it would be hard to say "yea.. but I think i will reflect on this lie" sometimes.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-purges-in-putins-...
The Ukrainians said what they were going to do if invaded and stuck to that while the Russians couldn't even keep their convoys fueled and fed. The real cause of the failure here is not disloyalty but incompetence. Incompetence is almost impossible for authoritarians to deal with rationally.
It’s a losing battle because ultimately responsibility creeps up to the person at the very top.
All dictators have multiple spy agencies that spy on each other. That's the only way for a dictator to stay in power, and ultimately to stay alive. The goal of these spy agencies is to catch the conspirators before they can stage the coup. That's the one job they need to be good at. Of course, they also have an official job, but that's a secondary concern. Competence and integrity are optional, maybe even counterproductive.
So, how do all these spy agencies spy on each other? They keep files. Lots of files. Everybody has a file on everybody. And Putin, as a God from the sky, can see everything. One person can lie, but not 10 competing ones. So, he's going to know who embezzles money, how much, on which yachts and mistresses they are spending the money, everything, all the dirt.
The problem is not that his spy embezzled the bribes. For sure they embezzled some, but not all. It's that they were incompetent. They didn't know who to bribe, how to make sure those bribed will play the role assigned to them, and the bribe fund was probably not that large to begin with. Oh, and the Ukrainians are not that weak at the spying game either. Remember, they were part of the Soviet Union, they had all the playbooks that Putin's people had too.
As for the leaks to the US to dissuade Putin. Well, that's just a nice cover for US's spies themselves. You think the US really doesn't have any spies in Russia? Think again.