This is a great thread describing the position of the army in the Russian society:
The author really knows what he’s talking about. It’s all true. Please remember that the army is venerated in a strong nation-state. In the post-nation state model, the object of veneration is the security apparatus. This happens because the narrative that “the army protects our borders” goes out of date together with the idea of the national borders. It becomes much more important to keep people in check than protect them from anything.
Clarissa's Blog 
He has other excellent analysis threads, too. I read his thread on political mythos and didn’t realize until now that he had more of those threads. It’s very spot-on.
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“He has other excellent analysis threads, too”
They’re completely addictive! I’m trying to limit myself to one or so a day (to prevent brain overload). Last night I was waiting impatiently for each new tweet as this one was going up…
It’s such a tragedy that Russia can’t actually harnass minds like his for good….
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This is hilarious. How a Ukrainian village armed with 2 flags defeated 4 Russian tanks: https://twitter.com/TOrynski/status/1502274459620855812
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I think part of the problem too is that Putin has made himself an absolute dictator, and generals can be some of the most dangerous threats to a dictator, so you have to appoint people to high military positions based more on loyalty than merit. Under the old Soviet system, this was probably less so as the Soviet system was not a straight dictatorship with one guy having absolute power after Stalin. The General Secretary was chosen by the Politburo. So the military probably had more higher-quality personnel.
I have read that there actually was a guy recently in the Russian military who did really try to stop a lot of the corruption regarding equipment and so forth, but as a result, he made a ton of enemies in the Russian military-industrial complex. So they fired him and brought in a guy who is a total lackey, who then fired the people the prior guy had appointed.
The irony to all of this is that during the days of the Russian Empire, the Russian military had some very prescient and revolutionary thinkers. The Russians are who invented the now widely accepted concept of the operational level of war and it was mastery of this that helped greatly in their defeating the Germans in WWII.
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