nATIONALISM DOESN'T WORK:

It is very likely that the targeting of Russian senior ground commanders forms part of a wider Ukrainian strategy to disrupt their enemies' command-and-control network. The Ukrainian forces are aware of the leadership approach that has been adopted by the Russian armed forces since 2001, much of which is based on international analysis conducted by the US and NATO agencies.

Its rigid hierarchical system, overseen by an autocratic leader in Vladimir Putin, condemns junior ranks to a chain of perpetual fear, with little allocated for independent thinking or decision-making.

Putin manages the military in much the same way as he does the wider Russian state, choosing loyalty to him above professional competence. This is no more clearly illustrated than the choice of Sergei Shoigu as Russian defense minister in 2012.

Lacking any military experience or understanding, Shoigu was chosen as he posed little political threat to Putin or established military tradition. He has been criticized by many for failing to introduce major reforms after the Georgian campaign in 2008, which highlighted key failings in the Russian military in carrying out combat operations.

Corruption is endemic within all aspects of Russian life - and this includes the military. A recent report, published as part of the London-based International Government Defense Integrity Index, identified that the Russian military had a corruption risk of high "owing to extremely limited external oversight of the policies, budgets, activities and acquisitions of defense institutions."

The report also highlighted a lack of transparency on procurement and the issuing of defense contracts, with a rating of only 36 out of 100 in this category. Loyalty to Putin may have landed senior leaders a place in the inner circle, but this has been at the expense of the personnel they serve.

On Sunday, Mykhailo Podoliak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said six Russian generals had been killed, calling the invading army "fully unprepared" for the fight in Ukraine. Western assessments of deaths among Russian commanders are slightly more conservative. One European diplomat familiar with Western intelligence assessments told Foreign Policy on Monday that at least five Russian generals had been killed, owing mostly to failures in electronic communications equipment that left them vulnerable to targeted strikes and to their efforts to get a large force of nearly 200,000 troops--many of them young conscripts--to follow orders by leading from the front.

"They're struggling on the front line to get their orders through," said the European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss recent battlefield intelligence. "They're having to go to the front line to make things happen, which is putting them at much greater risk than you would normally see."

The European diplomat said the Russian death toll among general officers is up to a fifth of the number of commanders deployed in Ukraine, which Western intelligence officials estimate at 20 officers, making the military less able to operate and more bogged down. "It's all about a lack of preparedness among the military," the diplomat said. "They are asking for things to happen, and they are not happening."

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