NOT TERMINATING THE USSR IS OUR ENDURING SHAME:

The Russian army has always been bad at setting up and sustaining supply lines. Gen. Omar Bradley once said about different types of military officers, "Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics."* In that sense, Russians are amateurs. This is well known. It is why Ukrainian soldiers explicitly attacked the Russian supply lines. It's why so many tanks and other vehicles have been spotted stuck on the side of a road.

This weakness might not matter so much if an army makes rapid progress at the start of its offensive. Its troops could plunder the places they conquer for fuel, food, and other supplies. But the Russian army isn't cut out for lightning strikes. Troops are trained in rote set pieces, with no time devoted to improvising if things don't go as planned. One reason for this is that junior officers are not allowed to take initiative. This is deliberate; it's part of the top-down command system dating back to Soviet times, if not earlier. In politics and in warfare, the small elite on top doesn't want subordinates to get too creative--if they did, they might take over.

And so, as the Russian invaders met resistance, they didn't quite know what to do. Military operations designed to take place sequentially--Step 1, then 2, then 3, etc.--fell apart, catastrophically. If Step 2 hit a big obstacle, the by-the-book soldiers moved on to Step 3 anyway. Therefore, large troop-transport planes tried to land, even though the airport hadn't been completely secured and Ukrainian air defense systems hadn't been destroyed. As a result, two Il-76 transport planes, each carrying 100 airborne troops, were shot down.

Similarly, tanks aren't supposed to roll through hostile territory all alone. They need to be escorted by infantry troops alongside or by combat planes from above, to avoid getting ambushed. Yet, in this invasion, Russian tanks are rolling all on their own or providing protection for reconnaissance scouts, but getting no protection for themselves. So, as might be expected, lots of Russian tanks are getting ambushed.

Nor have the Russians established air superiority, even though their air force far outnumbers Ukraine's. As a result, Ukrainian drones have been picking off Russian convoys with impunity.

There is a larger factor here: The Russian army is composed, by and large, of one-year conscripts, who are poorly trained (even within the confines of Russian military training), badly treated, and uninspired by ideology or any other motivating spirit. Hence the stories of captured Russian troops who had no idea why they were in Ukraine. At least a few didn't even know that they were in Ukraine--they thought they were still doing exercises in Belarus. Others have reportedly been found knocking on village doors for food or, in one case, asking a local police station for fuel.

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