That's the problem with all such interviews (also with mine to Mrs. Ljudmila Nemyria from the UkrLife, from two weeks ago): one never has the time to address specific examples.
It's a fascinating piece of work. Kennedy says the Russian government has been forcing banks to make loans to military manufacturers and supplies in a credit surge that will bring many banks crashing down when these near bankrupt and uncreditworthy companies default on their loans.
The author says the West just needs to do things to keep Russian stuck in this unholy mess. First, to loudly voice its continuing financial confidence and support for Ukraine and, second, to emphatically make clear sanctions will remain in force.
I don't think anyone was saying that were they? If you read Kennedy's piece he's saying that this is a large chunk of off-budget military spending most analysts were unaware of and that it carries big dangers for the Russian economy.
Btw, if the economy crashes and loanees default, do you really think the government will be able to keep the banks afloat without huge overseas borrowing? And, because of sanctions, that is very hard for Russia to secure. That's where Kennedy's analysis of what strategy western nations should follow is interesting: back Ukraine financially and enforce existing economic sanctions to keep Russia in the economic nose-dive it's created for itself.
His piece was clearly not written for you. But there are thousands of influential analysts in governments and the financial industry who do not understand this issue like you. what is the harm in informing htem?
UAF doesn't have the numerical advantages of Red Army or French Revolutionary Army. They can not ignore their officers and throw people at any problem.
They need a professional officer corps which is allowed to do their job.
The Russian / Soviet tradition is for strict military subordination to the civilian side.
Poland has a similar tradition where civilians outrank military în terms of education, social networking and political capital from previous repressions.
So UAF is bound to listen to every word and nuance from the Ukrainian politicians.
I can add that in addition to the commissars, the field commanders and soldiers of the Red Army had other "incentives for efficiency" - the NKVD/SMERSH and the barrier detachments. Considering even the official figures of deserters over 100,000 people, all of this is absent from the Ukrainian army.
Thank you for all these pieces. I will probably come back and join the discussion on the previous. I do have a complaint though. Once again you are writing obvious management literature stuff like: « Whatever the issue is, punishment for mistakes should not be the primary objective. Ukraine should focus on identifying successes and replicating them, identifying failures and correcting them, and removing leaders that have proven they are ineffective. Doing so will greatly enhance national survival.» Come on, this could be from any literature on safety or quality or even transformative management. This is bordering on airport literature! (And here I was aiming for serious humanistic discourse on war and end up with management advice? Talk to Hellion, you might have a success book here.) You mean the Ukrainian generals have not even been at airports and read management literature? Come to think of it, I guess you do think so. And to be honest, while these advice (which are very very sound) have been published in decades and sold in copious amounts the practice probably haven’t changed. (Which is good for us social science types, we don’t have to find new advice sine no on listen.) But to be fair to you, you started the first installment by identifying the culprit: Incompentence. Cannot but agree. Thanks for the illustrations, sad as they are.
First, I definitely wish them luck, and you are certainly right that I have absolutely no understanding of the magnitude of the change needed. Second, how good the techniques are varies quite a bit. Third, any application of those techniques would have to be somehow adapted to Ukraine and its context. As Norwegian reading Us management literature I know the gulf between my country and the US. I imagine the gulf being even wider between Ukraine and US.
Having said that I stand with my observation that several of Tom’s suggestions are part of management literature. He talks about span of control and avoiding micromanaging. He talks about the need for debriefings and learning. He talks about training and education and the need to learn to work together. This is staple for management literature. Including that sold at airports. Not sure if it is even western or something you will find in a lot of culture. I honestly think that the diagnosis Tom offers is plausible, but I am reading other sources on this war and I know not all agree with him. ( My opinion of the war must be built like this, reading different sources and try to make a picture of it. Tom is one.) I honestly also think that some of his advice should be heeded. Like learning, a better division of responsibility and so on.
The challenge then becomes how to get this implemented. As you say a monumental task. And I can assure you that managerial practices are quite different from the theory. (This one of the reasons so many professors at US universities can earn lot of money, you take a well known concept call it something else and sell it to managers and wanna be managers as a new wonder medicine. Snake oil salesmen have nothing on academics there.) So, poor jokes about airport literature aside. If you think that there is a need for change and some of the advice offered by Tom makes sense. How would you go about adapting them to the culture? How would you try to change? Your description above leads me to think that you do see the need to change. So how to go about it? I really would like to hear.
I would add one more problem - I don't think i met here (Poland) anyone above rank of captain that was improving his knowledge, demonstrated any level of technical knowledge in his field that wasn't obsolate by 20-30 years and when faced with feedback didnt look for a rug to showe the failed project idea and pretend it didn't happen instead of doing any corrections.
Also, when teaching the officers something you probably need 2 out of 3 of being older, having higher military rank or being full profesor, for them not to dismiss out of hand anything you say ;)
Thank you very much for a realistic and detailed analysis. I really learned something when you talked about micromanaging and how people in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine wants that. How the press conference works. Haven’t really understood that. I think you are right when talking about the need for time. It will take time. But if you watch somebody running a 10.000 m and trying to get a world record you would of course accept he had to run 10.000 m. You would still watch how fast he ran each round. After some rounds you would know whether there was progress towards the goal or not. I think you need some measure of progress both in education and military reforms. So you can see whether change is happening or not. What that can be I don’t know. But removing incompetence seems to be something that must be done, as far as possible and as fast as possible. No, not easy. But I think the inventiveness of Ukraine in the military technology area, in fighting at small scale, in women filling men’s positions and so on will help. You are educating the population.
Well it is passengers that buy airport literature… but I accept their lack of reading management books. I don’t hold that against them. Their management practice is another issue.
The first photo doesn't refer to the topic. УВВБ (Управління Внутрішної та Власної Безпеки) It's the department of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Search on the internet leads to the story about the bribe taker on the border.
Tom and Don, you've hit the nail on the head. It's very common in Ukraine. Also, it can be described with one idiom. I'm a chief, you're an idiot. It's the soviet style of managing.
NICE : "....punishment for mistakes should not be the primary objective. Ukraine should focus on identifying successes and replicating them, identifying failures and correcting them, and removing leaders that have proven they are ineffective. " AMEN!!!!!
I worked for the U.S. federal gov't for 34 years (6 years active duty in the USN; 28 years with the U.S. Civil Service). Re: the Civil Service, when a problem occurs, I have noticed that usually the little guy, i.e., those on the lower levels of the management chain of command (command? yeah, right--more like the chain of mis-management), gets the shaft while the higher you climb up that chain, the bigger guy escapes largely unscathed . . . even at times promoted!
An exception to senior management escaping blame and punishment is for the sexual harassment or abuse of female subordinates. At least in my small area of the civlian federal gov't service, some progress had been made in fighting sexual abuse in the workplace. Oh such efforts were not perfect or even completely effective, but I witnessed some progress during my civilian fed gov't tenure.
Sometimes justice in life actually occurs even if too infrequently. On other occasions, however, even a sexual abuser, rapist, criminal, etc. can achieve ... ahem, ahem, ahem!!! ... High Office!
This is a problem without a solution. You can not defend a position year after year without replacements. You can not hold a Russian assault with prepared firepower using a rushed unit of Teritorial Defence Force.
Put the same officers to command a decent trained and complete brigade. Suddenly they are quite good.
And we also get the reverse situation: experienced units like the 72nd in Vuhledar left out to wither due to lack of reinforcements (while the Russians reconstituted the same brigades again and again) and build brand-new and inexperienced formations like the 150-series brigades, without any veteran in these to serve as a core competent corps.
The part regarding forseeing the ability of someone performing in a promoted position is a bit delusional, because otherwise well known academic theories like the peter principle wouldn't exist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
But yes you are right, performance review and enabling channels for criticism and whistleblowing are the task of high command.
Hard and real talk is what it is, nothing changes if the ZSU command and manning system does not change PLUS the mindset of the decision makers at of the U Gen-Stab.
Here comes the latest raid (just started on 24.1.25) by Umerov / Yermak to take control over the Defense Acquisition Agency, with the budget of billions of dollars for the needs of SBU. Further details and documents in this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TfDdXINAFE (so far in Ukrainian, but hopefully soon in English too).
When the government officials of the level of Umerov and Yermak are so impudent in publicly showing their level of corruption, then there is not much hope.
It is not only incompetence, it is Corruption. Plain and obvious.
When the problem is corruption, lying and/or treachery, then you do not need to replace them with competent people. You just need to replace them with honest ones. The current situation is so far below the level where competence begins to matter, that there is no point talking about it. Therefore, the issue is not if they can find competent replacements, but can they, and do they want to, find honest ones.
People are the system, they create and manage it. Every system is exactly what the key people in it are like. It is called insitutional/corporate culture. Your statement that honest people do not create systems incentivising honesty is frankly as stupid as it is nonsensical. Who do you think creates them, God? Absolutely 100%, all you need is to get the right people, personality wise, in the right positions and let them work. This is easier said than done, but that is sufficient to repair any broken system. Once you have a good culture, then you can start focusing on skills.
Also, corruption is bribery, nepotism and cronyism. It encompasses all 3. The corruption across all public institutions, the UA gov and the ZSU is ubiquitous and nobody is trying to change it. Competence is something completely different, that you just use as a buzzword. A competent criminal is just a criminal, good at committing crime. Competence is not culture. All oligarchs on the planet are highly competent, otherwise they wouldn't be oligarchs. They don't create a desireable system. UA needs a culture change and it needs it fast.
Getting people with the right skills during war time is the easiest thing possible. You have 30M people in Ukraine, several M Ukrainians in Europe and more M around the world. There are 30 partner nations, that can provide expertise, virtually on any topic. Money is no object, you can bring somebody from the moon if you have to. It's getting the right personalities that is always the difficult part. There is not 1 system that the ZSU should implement asap, that hasn't been implemented by dozens of countries before them.
It's fairly clear that you don't understand what competence actually is. Outcome good, competent, outcome bad incompetent. You seem to believe that the lowest corruption is in scandinavia, because hordes of crooks watch each other. Either you have worked in some spectacularly bad places or the problem may be you.
The problem of corruption is systemic and cant be solved by just replacing a few people. This kind of change needs a decade of hard work on all levels, at least.
No it does not. There is no example from history, when it required decades. If it requires this much time, it means people are not even trying. In every organisation, a handful of people are responsible for its culture. This is why a new president or a CEO can so quickly fix failing, enormous institutions/companies. War is the best time to make sweeping cultural changes, whether good or bad. Since 2022, the culture in UA has only degenerated.
There are many examples. Just look at post communist countries. After decades of transition and many years of EU membership, they are still struggling with corruption. It will take many years before countries like Romania, Bulgaria etc become comparable to say Germany or Norway when it comes to the rule of law, corruption levels etc.
That's because they have not actually made any cultural changes in public institutions. They opened up the private economy to competition, the courts, the gov, none of them have fundamentally changed. If you are not doing anything, it can last forever.
Agree, culture/corporate culture eats managers and management books for a snacks. But often it rests on very few bad decisions. And some are simply not observable by inexperienced person. But experienced could find those soft spots and quite quickly change. But that always needs to be top down. Normally a middle manager is not able to do this. And "middle" is often relative. Or that "middle" manager should be willing to risk his/her position. But this also requires quite different personal motivation then most UA gov "middle" managers have. In other words they would not rock the boat in order to stay on it at all cost.
not very helpful, lots of general remarks in that interview and too few substance
Too general, sadly.
That's the problem with all such interviews (also with mine to Mrs. Ljudmila Nemyria from the UkrLife, from two weeks ago): one never has the time to address specific examples.
Wonderful breakdown of praise there!
I am sending an interesting link.https://navigatingrussia.substack.com/p/russias-hidden-war-debt
It's a fascinating piece of work. Kennedy says the Russian government has been forcing banks to make loans to military manufacturers and supplies in a credit surge that will bring many banks crashing down when these near bankrupt and uncreditworthy companies default on their loans.
The author says the West just needs to do things to keep Russian stuck in this unholy mess. First, to loudly voice its continuing financial confidence and support for Ukraine and, second, to emphatically make clear sanctions will remain in force.
I don't think anyone was saying that were they? If you read Kennedy's piece he's saying that this is a large chunk of off-budget military spending most analysts were unaware of and that it carries big dangers for the Russian economy.
Btw, if the economy crashes and loanees default, do you really think the government will be able to keep the banks afloat without huge overseas borrowing? And, because of sanctions, that is very hard for Russia to secure. That's where Kennedy's analysis of what strategy western nations should follow is interesting: back Ukraine financially and enforce existing economic sanctions to keep Russia in the economic nose-dive it's created for itself.
His piece was clearly not written for you. But there are thousands of influential analysts in governments and the financial industry who do not understand this issue like you. what is the harm in informing htem?
Stalin really smiles în his grave. 80 years and the commisars are working again în Ukraine.
UAF doesn't have the numerical advantages of Red Army or French Revolutionary Army. They can not ignore their officers and throw people at any problem.
They need a professional officer corps which is allowed to do their job.
The UAF soldiers, officers and even Genstab are pretty effective. They know their job at a basic level.
The problem is that the government refuses any retreat or troop rotation.
The same government doesn't accept officer feedback, fires reasonable people like Zalushny and hires blockheads like Sirski.
The Russian / Soviet tradition is for strict military subordination to the civilian side.
Poland has a similar tradition where civilians outrank military în terms of education, social networking and political capital from previous repressions.
So UAF is bound to listen to every word and nuance from the Ukrainian politicians.
I can add that in addition to the commissars, the field commanders and soldiers of the Red Army had other "incentives for efficiency" - the NKVD/SMERSH and the barrier detachments. Considering even the official figures of deserters over 100,000 people, all of this is absent from the Ukrainian army.
Ouch. Hard to read, but necessary. Ukraine needs to get it together. This really is a systems issue, and they need a new system or fix the old one.
Thank you for all these pieces. I will probably come back and join the discussion on the previous. I do have a complaint though. Once again you are writing obvious management literature stuff like: « Whatever the issue is, punishment for mistakes should not be the primary objective. Ukraine should focus on identifying successes and replicating them, identifying failures and correcting them, and removing leaders that have proven they are ineffective. Doing so will greatly enhance national survival.» Come on, this could be from any literature on safety or quality or even transformative management. This is bordering on airport literature! (And here I was aiming for serious humanistic discourse on war and end up with management advice? Talk to Hellion, you might have a success book here.) You mean the Ukrainian generals have not even been at airports and read management literature? Come to think of it, I guess you do think so. And to be honest, while these advice (which are very very sound) have been published in decades and sold in copious amounts the practice probably haven’t changed. (Which is good for us social science types, we don’t have to find new advice sine no on listen.) But to be fair to you, you started the first installment by identifying the culprit: Incompentence. Cannot but agree. Thanks for the illustrations, sad as they are.
Seems like there is a need then. But you need not bother with the American stuff, just translate Tom’s writing.
First, I definitely wish them luck, and you are certainly right that I have absolutely no understanding of the magnitude of the change needed. Second, how good the techniques are varies quite a bit. Third, any application of those techniques would have to be somehow adapted to Ukraine and its context. As Norwegian reading Us management literature I know the gulf between my country and the US. I imagine the gulf being even wider between Ukraine and US.
Having said that I stand with my observation that several of Tom’s suggestions are part of management literature. He talks about span of control and avoiding micromanaging. He talks about the need for debriefings and learning. He talks about training and education and the need to learn to work together. This is staple for management literature. Including that sold at airports. Not sure if it is even western or something you will find in a lot of culture. I honestly think that the diagnosis Tom offers is plausible, but I am reading other sources on this war and I know not all agree with him. ( My opinion of the war must be built like this, reading different sources and try to make a picture of it. Tom is one.) I honestly also think that some of his advice should be heeded. Like learning, a better division of responsibility and so on.
The challenge then becomes how to get this implemented. As you say a monumental task. And I can assure you that managerial practices are quite different from the theory. (This one of the reasons so many professors at US universities can earn lot of money, you take a well known concept call it something else and sell it to managers and wanna be managers as a new wonder medicine. Snake oil salesmen have nothing on academics there.) So, poor jokes about airport literature aside. If you think that there is a need for change and some of the advice offered by Tom makes sense. How would you go about adapting them to the culture? How would you try to change? Your description above leads me to think that you do see the need to change. So how to go about it? I really would like to hear.
I would add one more problem - I don't think i met here (Poland) anyone above rank of captain that was improving his knowledge, demonstrated any level of technical knowledge in his field that wasn't obsolate by 20-30 years and when faced with feedback didnt look for a rug to showe the failed project idea and pretend it didn't happen instead of doing any corrections.
Also, when teaching the officers something you probably need 2 out of 3 of being older, having higher military rank or being full profesor, for them not to dismiss out of hand anything you say ;)
A bit of exaggeration ofc, but not too much ;)
Thank you very much for a realistic and detailed analysis. I really learned something when you talked about micromanaging and how people in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine wants that. How the press conference works. Haven’t really understood that. I think you are right when talking about the need for time. It will take time. But if you watch somebody running a 10.000 m and trying to get a world record you would of course accept he had to run 10.000 m. You would still watch how fast he ran each round. After some rounds you would know whether there was progress towards the goal or not. I think you need some measure of progress both in education and military reforms. So you can see whether change is happening or not. What that can be I don’t know. But removing incompetence seems to be something that must be done, as far as possible and as fast as possible. No, not easy. But I think the inventiveness of Ukraine in the military technology area, in fighting at small scale, in women filling men’s positions and so on will help. You are educating the population.
No, it is impossible. Might as well not bother.
They were - CERTAINLY - never to any airport. Except as passengers, of course.
Well it is passengers that buy airport literature… but I accept their lack of reading management books. I don’t hold that against them. Their management practice is another issue.
The first photo doesn't refer to the topic. УВВБ (Управління Внутрішної та Власної Безпеки) It's the department of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Search on the internet leads to the story about the bribe taker on the border.
Tom and Don, you've hit the nail on the head. It's very common in Ukraine. Also, it can be described with one idiom. I'm a chief, you're an idiot. It's the soviet style of managing.
NICE : "....punishment for mistakes should not be the primary objective. Ukraine should focus on identifying successes and replicating them, identifying failures and correcting them, and removing leaders that have proven they are ineffective. " AMEN!!!!!
I worked for the U.S. federal gov't for 34 years (6 years active duty in the USN; 28 years with the U.S. Civil Service). Re: the Civil Service, when a problem occurs, I have noticed that usually the little guy, i.e., those on the lower levels of the management chain of command (command? yeah, right--more like the chain of mis-management), gets the shaft while the higher you climb up that chain, the bigger guy escapes largely unscathed . . . even at times promoted!
An exception to senior management escaping blame and punishment is for the sexual harassment or abuse of female subordinates. At least in my small area of the civlian federal gov't service, some progress had been made in fighting sexual abuse in the workplace. Oh such efforts were not perfect or even completely effective, but I witnessed some progress during my civilian fed gov't tenure.
Sometimes justice in life actually occurs even if too infrequently. On other occasions, however, even a sexual abuser, rapist, criminal, etc. can achieve ... ahem, ahem, ahem!!! ... High Office!
Ah, the Peter principle again:
people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence".
You take a successful leader of a battalion and you promote him to lead a brigade, then he suddenly isn't that successful.
How to deal with this classic management problem? Not easy. Some organizations reassign the problematic cases, others fire them, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
This is a problem without a solution. You can not defend a position year after year without replacements. You can not hold a Russian assault with prepared firepower using a rushed unit of Teritorial Defence Force.
Put the same officers to command a decent trained and complete brigade. Suddenly they are quite good.
And we also get the reverse situation: experienced units like the 72nd in Vuhledar left out to wither due to lack of reinforcements (while the Russians reconstituted the same brigades again and again) and build brand-new and inexperienced formations like the 150-series brigades, without any veteran in these to serve as a core competent corps.
Dear Don,
The part regarding forseeing the ability of someone performing in a promoted position is a bit delusional, because otherwise well known academic theories like the peter principle wouldn't exist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
But yes you are right, performance review and enabling channels for criticism and whistleblowing are the task of high command.
The whole thing is falling apart.
according to Budanov (https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/01/27/7495459/)
"Ukraine will face existential threat if negotiations don't start by summer"
A very suspicious "information leak" from a closed meeting of the National Security and Defense Council.
Hard and real talk is what it is, nothing changes if the ZSU command and manning system does not change PLUS the mindset of the decision makers at of the U Gen-Stab.
Here comes the latest raid (just started on 24.1.25) by Umerov / Yermak to take control over the Defense Acquisition Agency, with the budget of billions of dollars for the needs of SBU. Further details and documents in this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TfDdXINAFE (so far in Ukrainian, but hopefully soon in English too).
When the government officials of the level of Umerov and Yermak are so impudent in publicly showing their level of corruption, then there is not much hope.
It is not only incompetence, it is Corruption. Plain and obvious.
When the problem is corruption, lying and/or treachery, then you do not need to replace them with competent people. You just need to replace them with honest ones. The current situation is so far below the level where competence begins to matter, that there is no point talking about it. Therefore, the issue is not if they can find competent replacements, but can they, and do they want to, find honest ones.
It takes many years to build these institutions, even decades. Ukraine doesn't have years. It has maybe a year.
People are the system, they create and manage it. Every system is exactly what the key people in it are like. It is called insitutional/corporate culture. Your statement that honest people do not create systems incentivising honesty is frankly as stupid as it is nonsensical. Who do you think creates them, God? Absolutely 100%, all you need is to get the right people, personality wise, in the right positions and let them work. This is easier said than done, but that is sufficient to repair any broken system. Once you have a good culture, then you can start focusing on skills.
Also, corruption is bribery, nepotism and cronyism. It encompasses all 3. The corruption across all public institutions, the UA gov and the ZSU is ubiquitous and nobody is trying to change it. Competence is something completely different, that you just use as a buzzword. A competent criminal is just a criminal, good at committing crime. Competence is not culture. All oligarchs on the planet are highly competent, otherwise they wouldn't be oligarchs. They don't create a desireable system. UA needs a culture change and it needs it fast.
Getting people with the right skills during war time is the easiest thing possible. You have 30M people in Ukraine, several M Ukrainians in Europe and more M around the world. There are 30 partner nations, that can provide expertise, virtually on any topic. Money is no object, you can bring somebody from the moon if you have to. It's getting the right personalities that is always the difficult part. There is not 1 system that the ZSU should implement asap, that hasn't been implemented by dozens of countries before them.
It's fairly clear that you don't understand what competence actually is. Outcome good, competent, outcome bad incompetent. You seem to believe that the lowest corruption is in scandinavia, because hordes of crooks watch each other. Either you have worked in some spectacularly bad places or the problem may be you.
The problem of corruption is systemic and cant be solved by just replacing a few people. This kind of change needs a decade of hard work on all levels, at least.
No it does not. There is no example from history, when it required decades. If it requires this much time, it means people are not even trying. In every organisation, a handful of people are responsible for its culture. This is why a new president or a CEO can so quickly fix failing, enormous institutions/companies. War is the best time to make sweeping cultural changes, whether good or bad. Since 2022, the culture in UA has only degenerated.
There are many examples. Just look at post communist countries. After decades of transition and many years of EU membership, they are still struggling with corruption. It will take many years before countries like Romania, Bulgaria etc become comparable to say Germany or Norway when it comes to the rule of law, corruption levels etc.
That's because they have not actually made any cultural changes in public institutions. They opened up the private economy to competition, the courts, the gov, none of them have fundamentally changed. If you are not doing anything, it can last forever.
Agree, culture/corporate culture eats managers and management books for a snacks. But often it rests on very few bad decisions. And some are simply not observable by inexperienced person. But experienced could find those soft spots and quite quickly change. But that always needs to be top down. Normally a middle manager is not able to do this. And "middle" is often relative. Or that "middle" manager should be willing to risk his/her position. But this also requires quite different personal motivation then most UA gov "middle" managers have. In other words they would not rock the boat in order to stay on it at all cost.
More about 157 https://hromadske.ua/viyna/238262-miasna-bryhada-chy-bezdarnyy-komandyr-de-khloptsi-shcho-ne-tak-iz-novostvorenymy-bryhadamy
Constructors of long range drones are mobilized https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2025/01/30/7495897/
I read somewhere that Air Force personnel is still sent to the infantry.
What a waste of specialized personnel... And Ukraine still insists on not mobilizing their 18-25 year olds.