March 29, 2025: The Ukraine War was another disaster for the Russian army. In 2025 Russian military leaders are calling for another round of reforms, one that will work. All previous efforts had failed to one degree or another. A common factor in all the failed reform programs was corruption exacerbated by disastrous civilian leadership.

There have been several rounds of unsuccessful military reforms since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. One of the major causes of that collapse was their unaffordable and largely ineffective armed forces. In post-Soviet Russia there were far fewer restrictions on criticizing the military. Most Russians had a very negative attitude towards conscription and the reforms underway because of the Ukraine War disaster are typical of several previous efforts to remedy problems that continue to resist any fundamental change.

Military reform has never come easily to Russia and usually occurred when a particularly strong and harsh ruler was in charge. In modern times Russia has undergone four periods of major military reform. The first was in the early 18th century, under Czar Peter the Great. The next was under Field Marshall Milyutin in the late 19th century. In the 1930s, over a dozen daring reformers made the military ready for modern warfare. However, most of these men were executed by a paranoid dictator, Josef Stalin, just before World War II. For over 60 years there was not much real reform until 2008, when Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov sought to recast the Russian military into a force similar to those found in the West. This meant fewer officers and conscripts, more NCOs and volunteers, plus new equipment, weapons, training methods, and tactics. Serdyukov was replaced in late 2012 and it was thought that his reforms might be halted. That did not happen, but some of his reforms were delayed.

One of Serdyukov’s most unpopular moves was to shrink the size of the officer corps. Despite the fact that most of the officers being let go were not really needed, this elicited a lot of protests from active duty and retired officers. The mass officer firings continued anyway. Shrinking the officer corps proved bad for officer morale, as could be expected. Moreover, most of the good officers had left after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the Russian military saw its budget slashed by 80 percent. Building an NCO corps was difficult because the 1930s reforms had gotten rid of it because officers, all members of the Communist Party, were considered more politically reliable than NCOs. The big problem is the collapse of the Soviet era military industries. With orders from the Russian military disappearing in the 1990s, many of these firms disappeared or switched to civilian products. Those that survived did so with export orders. The defense industries lost their best people, who left for better paying jobs overseas or in new non-defense firms in Russia.

The latest round of reforms comes from Vladimir Putin, who blames the generals and military staff for not identifying and dealing with the problem. The generals were reluctant to tell Putin that he is the problem because the gangster kleptocracy he uses to rule Russia is thoroughly corrupt, starting with Putin personally, and makes everything for sale all the time. Russia was corrupt before Putin took over, but that has dramatically escalated since then. Putin refuses to believe that Russian forces cannot defeat the Ukrainians. Putin also refuses to believe it is the Ukrainian willingness to fight the Russian invaders, and not just all the military aid sent by NATO nations, that causes this. Putin also doesn’t want to hear about Russian soldiers avoiding service in Ukraine, refusing to fight once they got there, and often deserting if compelled to fight. Most junior officers agree with their troops but are much less likely to desert or remind their superiors that the Russian situation in Ukraine has become increasingly difficult.

By remaining in Ukraine, Russia continues to suffer high economic costs caused by the economic sanctions imposed by most Western nations. Russian leaders realize even now that, if the cost of continuing the war against Ukraine reaches the point where more and more Russians experience declining living standards, they might lose. Ukraine was not about defending Mother Russia, which is what happened during World War 2 when Russians were proud of their successful effort to halt the German invaders and then defeat Germany with some help from Western nations. Ukraine is different as Russia is the invader. Many Russians are not comfortable with that and don’t understand why their government would invade a neighbor. The invasion failed and the Russian people are paying for it in terms of Russian lives lost and growing hardship from sanctions and the war’s cost.

Soon the biggest priority was improving the economy and that meant doing something about the harsh economic sanctions imposed by Western nations. That left Russia with only two trading partners: Iran and North Korea. These allies could supply some weapons but little else.

Then there are the internal problems that weaken Russian ability to fight the Ukrainians. Internal fighting between Russian troops belonging to different ethnic groups sometimes turns deadly. These animosities often interfere with combat operations because the two groups don’t trust each other. There are similar problems between regular troops and irregulars. Both are supposed to cooperate in combat but that often does not happen. Commanders with these irregular or non-Russian troops often have problems getting these different types of soldiers to cooperate in combat. These off-duty differences don’t disappear when the fighting starts. Another problem with maintaining troop morale is providing the troops with adequate combat equipment, which includes helmets, protective vests and combat glasses to protect eyes from the tiny but injurious debris created during combat. Economic sanctions have prevented Russia from manufacturing all this essential equipment for its soldiers. To deal with that Russia smuggles in the equipment from China via Turkish companies that handle such things through a variety of misdirection and deceptions they have developed over the years.

Low morale led Russian officers to try shooting any of their troops who refused or hesitated to fight. During World War 2, killing a few soldiers to encourage the others was a common practice. Sometimes NKVD secret police troops would be used as barrier forces behind a major attack. The NKVD men had machine-guns that were used on any Russian troops moving away from the fighting. This told the Russian soldiers that they could take their chances fighting the Germans or face certain death from the NKVD. In Ukraine there have been a growing number of cases where Russian troops were reluctant or refused to fight but, unlike their World War 2 ancestors, they sometimes shoot back at officers who shoot at them, or even shoot them first. There have been many battles in Ukraine that saw thousands of Russian troops killed in poorly planned and supported attacks. Those have become normal because the Russian army cannot supply front-line troops with any supplies, not even water, because of Ukrainian UAVs. The untrained troops are sent forward only with the ammunition, water and food they can carry and are immediately sent into suicidal attacks before they die of thirst or surrender to the Ukrainians. For the last few months 50 percent more Russian soldiers have become casualties than have been mobilized.

Most of the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine come from rural areas. In the cities, military age men have more opportunities to get assigned to non-combat jobs or avoid military service altogether. In rural Russia military service is honored as are those who die in combat. Many of these rural areas are the home base for specific combat units. Local men join these units and, if they are killed in combat, are remembered and honored. One such unit is the 37th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is based near the Mongolian border and is part of the defense forces in the Russian Far East. This unit has a history stretching back to World War II, when in 1942 it was the 5th Guards Cavalry Corps. In 1965 this unit became the 5th Guards Tank division. In 2008 a large-scale reform of the army made this division into the 37th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade. In the Russian army a unit is designated a Guards unit after performing exceptionally well in combat. Thereafter, successors to that unit keep the Guards designation.

Units of the brigade served in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2022.During this period the brigade suffered internal problems such as abuse of conscripts, including murder and accidental shootings by poorly trained troops. The low morale led to some suicides and accusations of soldiers being severely beaten by superiors and receiving inadequate clothing, food and medical attention. Some soldiers were forced to pay cash bribes to their superiors before they were officially discharged, though conscripts were supposed to serve only one year. This made conscript morale very low by Russian standards. Career officers and soldiers were generally free to abuse conscripts as much as they wished but had to be careful not to seriously injure or kill these soldiers because that might lead to an investigation and punishment of the guilty. This often happens when families of soldiers complain about their sons being badly injured or killed by their superiors. These complaints often led to bad publicity for the military even though this misbehavior had been common since the end of World War II. It was newsworthy that the number of soldiers abused in Ukraine was far higher than the number reported during the Chechen or Afghan wars.

In 2021 Russia was much larger than Ukraine and had nearly four times as many people and a larger economy and military. Before deciding to invade, Russia calculated, based on what turned out to be flawed information, that they would invade Ukraine from the north, where the border is closest to the capital Kyiv, and win a quick and cheap victory. It didn’t work out as planned. Part of the reason was that Russian leader Vladimir Putin did not tolerate bad news very well and the messenger often suffered as well. When Putin asked for intel on the situation inside Ukraine, he was told that morale was low, loyalty to the government equally weak and the military disorganized and demoralized.

All that was quite untrue, but it was what Putin was looking for and he ordered the Stavka military general staff to plan and carry out an invasion of Ukraine that would take advantage of the intel Putin received. Some Stavka members suspected or realized that the Intel Putin received was overly optimistic, but their job was to do what he wanted. They did it quickly and competently and Putin approved the attack plan.

The Russian attack was an expensive disaster, with heavy losses among junior combat officers and even heavier losses for the most modern and effective tanks. There were heavy losses among the troops, but they were easier to replace than those officers. At this point it seemed like a good idea to call off the Russian invasion, halt the heavy losses of personnel, armored vehicles and munitions, and take care of the Russian people. While most Russians seemed to approve of the invasion, they did so because Putin said he did it to prevent NATO from doing something bad to Russia. That was never going to happen since NATO was a defensive alliance, founded in 1949, and its objective was to protect Western Europe from Russian aggression. The NATO mandate has not changed, nor have Russian aggressive tendencies. Ukraine realized this and was seeking NATO membership. The Russian invasion was, in part, to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Putin knew that the NATO charter obliged all members to join in defending a member who was attacked. While Ukraine has not yet been able to join NATO, their admission has only been delayed by the war with Russia, at least until the recent policy change of the Trump administration. Many Russians began to realize this and that did not improve Putin’s declining popularity.

NATO was created as a mutual defense organization to deal with any Russian attack. That never came during the Cold War, but Russia returned to its aggressive ways in 2014 and 2022 when it invaded Ukraine. NATO is a major support of Ukraine and has agreed to admit Ukraine as a member once the Russian invaders have been dealt with. One reason Russia invaded Ukraine was to prevent them from joining NATO and the EU/European Union. The EU is mainly an economic alliance and Ukraine wants to join it and NATO rather than remaining neutral and threatened again with Russian aggression.

History regularly repeats the fact that going to war brings with it unexpected costs. Russia didn’t expect its invasion of Ukraine to cost so much. This began with Russian leaders convincing themselves that Ukrainian resistance would not be a problem and would be over quickly. Many Russian government and military officials knew otherwise but the senior decision makers dismissed such pessimistic assessments. To make matters worse, Russian leader Vladimir Putin is determined to wear down Ukrainian resistance, despite heavy Russian losses. The Russian plan includes reducing Russian casualties by continuing to spend heavily on weapons, munitions and missile attacks on Ukrainian economic targets.

Then there's the corruption, which expanded in the military in the 1990s as the size of the force shrank over 70 percent. Officers and troops sold off a lot of unneeded military equipment and officers stole money they had control over. This caused all sorts of problems, from lack of maintenance for equipment and barracks to shortages of fuel to stay warm during the severe Russian Winter and food causing hunger and even some starvation deaths among lower ranking troops. For most of the last decade military prosecutors have been busy sending corrupt officers to jail, but that has not eliminated the problem. Low troop morale also remains a problem. Thus it should be no surprise that the government has given priority to keeping nuclear weapons, and the missiles that deliver them, in good shape. How well that priority has worked is unknown – it is difficult to keep Russia’s degree of corruption from spreading. For the rest of the armed forces, change is coming very slowly but it keeps coming. The ancient Russian army traditions are gradually being peeled away. The corrupt and reform resistant Russian army is slowly evolving into more of the same, but with different leaders and labels.