Undisciplined Communications: Medvedev, Kadyrov, Prigozhin, Solovyov
Apparently the Commander in Chief of the Russian Armed Forces nor his insiders foresaw the weakness of Russia’s Armed Forces before invading Ukraine. His insiders did not effectively warn President Putin that he did not really know his forces and their capabilities, a basic leadership requirement for anyone in command. Perhaps they purposely did not offer candid advice so Putin would fail and open the door to their leadership bids, if Meduza’s reporting is accurate.
In late September, Dmitri Medvedev jeered that NATO would not dare intervene if Russia struck Ukraine with a nuclear weapon. His comments were a glaring admission of failure of the Russia’s conventional armed forces under the ultimate command of Vladimir V. Putin.
Ramzan Kadyrov, a regional leader and longtime assassin-handler for Putin, bitterly attacked the honor of the Russian Army General Staff and chain of command that Vladimir V. Putin led, deployed, and directed. When Kadyrov said commanders over the forces retreating from Lyman should be sent to the front with rifles to “cleanse their shame with blood,” that would of necessity have implied the entire chain of command responsible for ordering them there, overseeing them, and knowing their capabilities, up to and including Vladimir V. Putin.
Then Yevgeney Prigozhin, “Putin’s cook,” piled onto Kadyrov’s cutting condemnation of the Russian military, impliedly including Putin and wrote, “Send all these pieces of garbage barefoot with machine guns straight to the front.”
Then the nearly comic “Putin’s Voice,” Vladimir Solovyov show, allegations of cowardice against the Russian military command.
The comments were not only unprofessional but passive aggressive challenges to Putin’s authority, indicating Putin’s weakness and for the Siloviki, so much chum in the shark infested waters of Kremlin group thinkers from the former KGB running the nation into the ground presently. The comments were:
(1) admissions of failure of Vladimir V. Putin’s command performance over the so-called “special military operation;”
(2) admissions of Vladimir V. Putin’s failure to know his chain of command before deploying them and relying on them;
(3) failure of Vladimir V. Putin to care about the rank and file in the Russian military;
(4) an insult to the hard work and sacrifices of countless Russians serving, sacrificing, and dying for leadership impulsivity by those in high places over the Russian Armed Forces.
After all of this, in the ultimate show of weakness, Vladimir V. Putin ceremoniously made Ramzan Kadyrov a “general” in the Russian Army despite Kadyrov’s implied harpooning of Putin’s leadership skill, talent, and reliability as a command in chief, and, despite Kadyrov’s lack of presence at the front in the hardest fighting.
The buck stops with a Commander-in-Chief posing with military weapons and implying his KGB training included military capabilities, posing in Russian naval infantry shirts and the like. Obviously being a KGB spy in East Germany, far from having seen any combat service beyond the soft judo mats of Moscow and St. Petersburg, does not prepare one to be a competent, front-leading military commander-in-chief.
Additionally, despite their bravado, neither Kadyrov or Prigozhin have personally reported to fight at the front with Russian troops themselves. Kadyrov said he would throw his children into the fight, but we will see if that is true. It smacked of an elitist stunt. The main point is, the biggest talker is not himself going to fight at the front.
Indeed, neither Putin, Kadyrov, or Prigozhin have led Russian troops into battle. They are all part of the same failure in leadership of the Russian Federation and the security state that supposedly has force protection and anti-corruption duties with regard to the Armed Forces.
The buck stops at the Kremlin and the offices of its insiders for spending other peoples’ lives in unjust, unnecessary, and unmeritorious warfare in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.
