The, “Russia is backwards and militarily incompetent,” bit is a recurring narrative among the Western military class that crops up every few decades

As Saltykov-Schedrin joked, “You think about us Russians: northern bears! And we meanwhile have terminology…”

Well, yes, but in this case we see a more amusing “they are damn tough…” (runs off to overeagerly gather morbid rumors) “…but at least we are morally superior, so there!”.

It’s hard to be speshul. One cannot just say “Hey, these dudes were slogging their way through World War I from early on and until their state died, immediately after which they had a few years of intense maneuver war. Anybody who lived through this got to be a tough cookie. Then a few military adventures, mostly with no great success, but it gave lots of the younger cadres experience too”.

It happened during the Great Northern War, the Napoleonic Wars, WWII, and it’s happening again today.

The pattern goes as follows:
- Russia visibly falls behind in some capacity
- A Western power trounces Russia, or else Russia struggles in some obvious way that would be embarrassing for a Western power.
- Russia learns from it’s mistakes and reorganizes
- A Western power tries to repeat the trouncing
- Russia wins, but in a way that defied all expectations and understanding of what would constitute an acceptable victory for Westerners
- Everyone respects Russia for a few generations (40-60 years)
- Rinse and repeat.

The tendency to project our strategic culture/thinking onto our enemies is deeply ingrained in all cultures, and must be consciously opposed. Russians simply think of victory, losses, and what constitutes, “winning,” in different terms than most Westerners.

General Eisenhower wrote of his own feeling of shock on hearing Marshal Zhukov say that the Russians did not bother to clear minefields; thev marched their infantry across the mined area and took their losses.

Much less of a shock for anyone who has read anything about Zhukov produced neither by himself (actually mostly by ghostwriters, but he checked and directed v.1.0 of his “autobiography” personally) nor by Brezhnev era GlavPur drudges. “Unknown Zhukov” by Sokolov (2000) is fairly good, though Suvorov caught even him on pasting smoke-and-mirrors stuff on a matter where references are hard to find (January 1941 war games).

Zhukov was known to use up any troops like the other commanders penal units, often in repeated head-on attacks with little to no result. His appearance at a nearby staff (once discovered) was dreaded accordingly.

But by night the enemy fanned out over their rear area and collected hundreds of their own civilians

Sadly lacks details as to which unit(s) those were. I suspect this may significantly reduce the level of surprise as well.

Peiper recounted how during the 1941–42 winter, the Russian command published an order decreeing death by the firing squad for any soldier so careless that he allowed himself to become frostbitten.

Which was predictably counterproductive. But who is Mr. “Russian command”? Zhukov again? This does have his hallmark.