How Putin's War in Ukraine Became a Disaster for Russia

They never had a chance.

Groping blindly in crater farms, troops from Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or functioning walkie-talkies, they said. Just weeks earlier, they were factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories on state television before being drafted in September. One doctor was a former barista who had never had medical training.

Now they were crammed onto the roofs of overcrowded armored vehicles, traversing fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from half a century ago and virtually nothing to eat, they said. Russia had been at war for most of the year, but its army seemed less prepared than ever. In interviews, members of the brigade said that some of them had barely fired a gun before and described having almost no bullets anyway, let alone air cover or the artillery. But that didn't scare them too much, they said. They would never see combat, their commanders had promised.

It wasn't until the shells started crashing around them, tearing their comrades to pieces, that they realized how duped they had been.

Thrown to the ground, an enlisted Russian soldier named Mikhail remembers opening his eyes to a shock: the shredded bodies of his comrades littering the field. Shrapnel had also ripped open his stomach. Desperate to escape, he said, he crawled to a copse of trees and tried to dig a ditch with his hands.

Of the 60 members of his platoon near the Ukrainian town of Pavlivka that day in late October, about 40 were killed, Mikhail said, speaking by phone from a military hospital outside Moscow. Only eight, he said, escaped serious injury.

"This is not war," Mikhail said, struggling to speak through heavy, liquid breaths. "It is the destruction of the Russian people by their own commanders."

1. Blunders

It took Russia four days to hit an obvious target. It was too late then.

2. Hybris

Putin has summoned many of Russia's most powerful businessmen into a trap.

3. Internal rot

The Kremlin has spent a lot of money on the army. "A new Potemkin village" was erected instead.

4. Before that collapses