On MREs – Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes in NYT:

‘The Russian soldiers have been plagued by poor morale as well as fuel and food shortages. Some troops have crossed the border with MREs (meals ready to eat) that expired in 2002, U.S. and other Western officials said, and others have surrendered and sabotaged their own vehicles to avoid fighting.’

(…)

‘“The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military,” said Andrei V. Kozyrev, the foreign minister for Russia under Boris Yeltsin, in a post on Twitter. “Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to the President. So they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military.”’

(…)

‘Russian tank units, for instance, have deployed with too few soldiers to fire and protect the tanks, officials said. The result is that Ukraine, using Javelin anti-tank missiles, has stalled the convoy headed for Kyiv by blowing up tank after tank.
Thomas Bullock, an open source analyst from Janes, the defense intelligence firm, said Russian forces have made tactical errors that the Ukrainians have been able to capitalize on.
“It looks like the Ukrainians have been most successful when ambushing Russian troops,” Mr. Bullock said. “The way the Russians have advanced, which is that they have stuck to main roads so that they can move quickly, not risk of getting bogged down in mud. But they are advancing on winding roads and their flanks and supply routes are overly exposed to Ukrainian attacks.” Russian battlefield defeats, and mounting casualties, also have an impact.
“Having the Ukrainians just wreck your airborne units, elite Russian units, has to be devastating for Russian morale,” said Frederick W. Kagan, an expert on the Russian military who leads the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. “Russian soldiers have to be looking at this and saying, ‘What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?’”’

Read the article here.

Money for the army went straight to Cyprus for yachts. What’s new?

This very much sounds like the Soviet-Union in 1982. After the implosion of communism Yeltsin and Putin came. What will come after the implosion of Putinism?

By the way, in Afghanistan NATO soldiers detested MREs that were not expired. (Meals Rejected by Ethiopians.)