Anatomy Of A Failed War: Russia's Systemic, Cascading Military Collapse

A new report assessing the reasons why Russia has not only failed to defeat Ukraine but has suffered catastrophic degradation of its military capabilities focuses on a number of causes.

The first is that the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine was based on a 'political fiction' that it could be quickly subdued, from which all the subsequent failures have descended. Combined with rigidly centralized decision-making, notoriously inept logistics, inadequate troop training and inflated estimates of their own abilities. The result has been an embarrassing - and at times humiliating - series of setbacks and missed opportunities which have allowed Ukraine to fight its much larger rival to a stalemate. JL

Alex Raufoglu reports in the Kyiv Post:

Russia’s early military failures in Ukraine were not a series of tactical blunders but “the systemic collapse of a political-military machine.” The Kremlin’s decision to launch a “special military operation” was a “political fiction." This critical miscalculation led to cascading failures that undermined Russia’s war effort from the outset. Ukraine has exploited Russia’s weaknesses with a “deliberate, adaptive response.” The conflict continues to be defined by a “tightly coupled, politically constrained machine meeting a flexible, networked opponent.”

Russia’s early military failures in Ukraine were not a series of tactical blunders but “the systemic collapse of a political-military machine,” according to a new report from The Saratoga Foundation, a US-based think-tank.

Speaking to Kyiv Post, the report’s author, Roger McDermott, explains how the conflict has become a clash between two fundamentally different military systems. The report, titled “Fractured Strategy: A Systems View of Russia’s Early Failure in Ukraine,” argues that the Kremlin’s decision to launch a “special military operation” (SMO) was a “political fiction” that “stripped Russia’s military of the fundamental tools needed for a large-scale conflict.”

This critical miscalculation led to cascading failures that undermined Russia’s war effort from the outset.

 

Cascade of Russian Failures

The report details how Russia’s central miscalculation led to a breakdown of its military machine.

Its military doctrine, which relies on strategic surprise and synchronized action, was made “impossible” by the SMO framework. “The world was tipped off by Western intelligence,” the report states, “denying Russia the element of shock.” This was compounded by widespread logistical paralysis. The operational plan assumed a rapid advance, but “supply chains were configured for a brief ‘road march’.” This made them vulnerable to ambushes, creating chokepoints and stalling the offensive.

 

The military’s command was also “hyper-centralized, stifling initiative at the tactical level,” a “stark contrast to Ukraine’s defense,” which was empowered to adapt.

The report concludes that “Russia’s early military failure... was not anomalous but unavoidable under the conditions it imposed upon itself.”

Ukraine’s Asymmetric Advantage

 

The report emphasizes that Ukraine’s success was “not accidental; it was systemic.” Its armed forces, trained on NATO principles, exploited Russia’s weaknesses with a “deliberate and adaptive response.”

They empowered junior officers to “make quick decisions,” a decentralized approach that compressed their response time and allowed them to outmaneuver Russian units. Ukraine also achieved a decisive victory in the information domain, using transparent communication to garner international support.

This was reinforced by a “whole-of-society” resistance, where civilians actively reported Russian troop movements and prepared their own defenses.

The report concludes that “Ukraine’s success in weaponizing asymmetry was not accidental; it was systemic.”

The War’s Enduring Grammar

McDermott’s analysis has evolved to explain the current, grinding war of attrition.  Speaking to Kyiv Post, he emphasized that while Russia has adapted “materially,” it has not changed “conceptually.”

The Kremlin has engineered a “workaround to the early ‘SMO’ constraints by mobilizing the economy and manpower piecemeal, while still avoiding the political and legal costs of declaring war.”

 

The system, he says, is now “harder, thicker, and more industrial,” yet remains “centrally controlled and politically bounded, exactly the fragility I highlighted at the outset.” The conflict, McDermott explains, continues to be defined by a “tightly coupled, politically constrained machine meeting a flexible, networked opponent.”

He says that while “Moscow has slowly and steadily adapted its war machine at unimaginable costs; Kyiv has widened its network.”

The outcome of the war, he concludes, will “hinge less on single weapon types than on which system better converts resources into timely effects while absorbing shock.”

McDermott warns that Ukraine’s “decentralized excellence” is sustainable only if it can maintain a consistent flow of ammunition, power resilience through winter, and continuous adaptation in the electronic warfare and drone duel.

If these factors slip, the expert cautions, “decentralized excellence risks being starved of the mass and energy that an attritional fight consumes.”