Ask HN: Russian Military and Alcohol? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Russian Military and Alcohol?

7 pointsjschveibinz16 comments

I was pondering the reported ineffectiveness of Russia’s military, so I did a quick search on alcoholism across the world. According to World Population Review, roughly 37% of Russia’s male population are alcoholics. For those that have served, is alcohol dependency a plausible explanation for Russia’s military issues?

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I've read reports that initially Russia had total of 190k troops of which 80k were BTGs, against Ukraine which has the second largest army in Europe after Russia, supported materially by NATO and has active duty of 200k.

The numbers make it look like Russia went in undermanned against a defender and has taken substantial land mass from Ukraine so far. Before the war I assumed Ukraine would win. That they've lost so much land to Russia has been a surprise to me.

So these "Russia is underperforming" ideas seem just weird to me.

The conclusion of underperformance is based on the number of weapons and soldiers Russia is deploying and losing for the relatively small gains they are making. Even those who flatly said Russia's estimate of 3 days was fantasy did not expect Ukraine to do this well.

I guess I differ in that I expected Ukraine to do better initially so it's been a surprise to me.

I felt similarly until I started watching Denis Davydov do analysis on youtube. He illustrates pretty clearly the asymmetries of this war.

If you truly thought Ukraine would win then you’re an outlier - the consensus expectation was that Ukraine would fall relatively quickly to Russia.

I havent followed the news but they where pushing this story after a couple of days, which makes me think there isn't much substance too it.

If Ukraine is doing well, it's because Ukraine is being armed by NATO. This is probably one of the best wars ever, from an arms dealing perspective.

It sounds like you're expectation of how Ukraine would do, is very different from that which Putin was planning on, or he would have prepared his people for a long and grueling conflict. To me, it looks a lot like GWB's perspective headed into the Iraq war, expecting it to be quick and easy with few casualties.

Even if/when Russia defeats the Ukrainian military (a big "if" at this point), they would have an ongoing problem trying to govern it, or prop up a more (to them) suitable government. It is difficult to picture a successful outcome for them at this point, if Ukraine decides to keep fighting.

At beginning of the war Russia had more equipment, and materiel on every row: much more tanks, and armored vehicles, overwhelmingly more planes, vast amount of rockets vs close to zero in UA army. Also, "supported materially by NATO" is a misleading statement unless narrowed down to more specific areas. At that moment most analytics in the West expected Russia to win quickly, and few people were willing to vouch for sending substantial military aid after the debacle in Afghanistan. Javelins, NLAWs (from US, and UK, not NATO), but other stuff was mostly non-lethal, and frankly almost symbolic. It took quite some time before it became obvious that Ukrainian army fights effectively, and Ukraine is absolutely not in mood to surrender, when other NATO countries started to promise weapons. But even now many of these promises are yet to be fulfilled. Meanwhile after failing in wider campaign, Russia concentrated forces in smaller theater, and in Donbass they have now reportedly 10-15x advantage in artillery firepower.

Note, btw that most of the territory Russians managed to capture is in the Ukraine's south which is grassy plains - arguably very hard to protect while enemy dominates in the air, no matter how much personnel you have.

> roughly 37% of Russia’s male population are alcoholics.

There's a very big selection bias you're not accounting for, the amount of people in the russian military who are alcoholics might be significantly lower than that of the overall population. An obvious explanation could be that people who have steady jobs (in the army) are less likely to become alcoholics.

> I was pondering the reported ineffectiveness of Russia’s military, so I did a quick search on alcoholism across the world.

This is not really a scientific way of going about things: you shouldn't go thinking about possible conclusions, and then start looking for data supporting your claims. You need a theory that fits the evidence, not evidence that fits your theory.

Alcoholism is ABSOLUTELY more common in the US military than the general population. That’s in a culture that disapproves of alcoholism - if anything I’d expect it to be much higher than 37% in Russia

That's a good point, and another reason why it's not really useful to use population-averages as a means to say something about averages of the military.

I don't have any data to back this up, but I would argue that the alcoholism is more cultural and circumstantial than causal.

I don't think it is the cause of their problems; immediate prohibition of alcohol wouldn't "fix" them. It's a byproduct of some of the other problems and might even be a mitigation of some of the discipline and behavior issues; its easier to put up with stupid shit when you're drunk.

I have been lectured by a fellow who did serve in active conflicts about the various military traditions he experienced; he analyzed them by unit cohesion. How big can a team in an army be? How long does it take for a new squad of thrown together strangers to become a team? and so on. With no fondness for the American command structure, he still rated the American armed forces as pretty good because real, problem focused teams can be large ("up to several hundreds of people!"), and assemble quickly. Other forces he characterized as "lost individuals with occasional supply drops."

While I don't doubt it is an issue, the Russian military performance is adequately explained by:

1) Putin apparently thought the Ukrainian military officers had been bribed by the Russian FSB, but they had not, so he didn't expect as much resistance as he got (and thus wasn't ready for it)

2) The West (including non-NATO members such as Sweden and Finland) have contributed much more modern armaments (e.g. man-portable anti-tank weapons) than Russia (or maybe even the West) expected

3) Putin did not prepare Russia psychologically for a prolonged campaign, so most of the Russian soldiers did not expect to be sent to one, and were resentful upon discovering themselves in Ukraine for a fierce and prolonged fight

I'm sure alcoholism doesn't help with any of that. But, it doesn't seem necessary to explain Russia's performance.

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/1935...

As a Ukrainian, I am happy Russia is having "military issues". That aside, the problem is this - Russia's primary generator of national wealth is oil and gas exports of raw product. Its primary internal employment is in the military-industrial complex. What do you need to get a job like that? That's right, you need proof of military service. How do you get that? You sign a contract that promises that you will never get sent to the front line, and then you get sent there. If you are lucky, you get captured by Ukrainians. Else, you die or are heavily wounded. 30000+ dead so far.

Russia's military is subject to extreme corruption. Logistical supplies were sold instead of being stockpiled for wartime needs. Equipment in long-term storage had its parts stripped and sold. That means Russia is running into the same problem that doomed Hitler - unable to feed troops and fuel its vehicles.

One really bad problem Russia has is communications. Its encrypted radios are non-existent due to corruption in the contract that was supposed to provide them and so it's communicating military orders over open air. Ukraine has encrypted radios.

So, why is Russia faltering? It is relying on the Soviet Army tactics while Ukraine adopted NATO-like tactics. The problem with Soviet tactics is they assume the entire heavy industry is in war mode and they do not value soldiers' lives. Each battalion-tactical group is a self-contained unit that heavily relies on military vehicles. When those vehicles get destroyed, which is what Ukraine excels at with its drone-guided artillery, these groups become under equipped infantry and thus useless in achieving their objectives.

Russia was able to produce 60 modern tanks per year. They lost 23 years of tank production so far. These are absolutely catastrophic losses that are unrecoverable, but Ukraine can't win yet because it doesn't have the weapons it needs to cut off Russia's ability to mount attacks. Those weapons are MLRS, which is what Russia is using to rain terror upon our cities. In fact, Ukraine has captured many tanks and MLRS systems from Russia.

According to conservative estimates by Ukraine's ministry of defense, the total combat losses of the enemy from 24.02 to 29.05 were approximately:

personnel - about 30150 (+150) persons were liquidated, tanks ‒ 1338 (+8) од, APV ‒ 3270 (+12) од, artillery systems – 631 (+3) од, MLRS - 203 (+0) од, Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 93 (+0) од, aircraft – 207 (+0) од, helicopters – 174 (+0) од, UAV operational-tactical level - 504 (+1), cruise missiles - 116 (+0), warships / boats - 13 (+0) од, vehicles and fuel tanks - 2240 (+14) од, special equipment - 48 (+0).

Ukraine will win, but it's taking a long time to get the long range weapons it needs. Want to help? Figure out how to accelerate delivery of MLRS.

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