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...decades of corruption in russia's military has forced a very non-economic transition to a war economy,...
It's been maybe a year since Perun did a corruption video, and it's effects on military preparedness. It was very interesting. He really favors defense economics, so that was right up his alley.
It would be difficult to summarize, but I'll try a bit. Corruption saps funds from defense in several ways. One of them is reporting that something works (because you're incentivised to report that) when it doesn't, and no one in the chain wants to say "it doesn't work", so when it reaches the top, they implement it. That doesn't even include direct pocketing of funds that were supposed to be used for materiel. It really was a mire that needed a full hour to explain. But Russia had it in spades, so when called into action, a lot of things didn't work properly, or training didn't get done, or whatever. Reducing the combat readiness of their forces.
They didn't expect to have to transition to a war-time economy, but through various circumstances -including corruption-, they are now three years into a 2 week campaign, and having to do it. Which is taxing their economy greatly, and I'm sure Russian mothers are getting tired of body bags coming home, and Putin is having DPRK send thousands of their -poorly trained- soldiers to use as cannon fodder. Though, as a bonus, Russia is able to shutter several of their prisons because those prisoners volunteered for release to fight in Ukraine, and most promptly died.
