Soviet-style military hierarchy is Russia’s weak point on battlefield, Azov commander says

He argued the weak point of the Russian army, which Ukraine’s Defense Forces repeatedly encounter in combat, is an inherited Soviet system in which “every step is regulated from above.”

According to Prokopenko, Western analysts misread both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tolerance for risk and the insulated decision-making process in the Kremlin, leading to mistaken forecasts about possible escalation and Russia’s response to NATO support for Ukraine.

“This analytical blindness has partly remained to this day,” Prokopenko wrote. “Many in the West continue to view this conflict exclusively through the prism of a war of attrition, where victory is determined only by the volume of resources and the ability to mobilize more people. This is a dangerous mistake.”

In his view, a vivid example of the real situation was a Defense Forces operation in the Dobropillia sector against Russian forces in the second half of 2025.

“In essence, it was a rethinking of the concept of mobile defense in the conditions of modern war,” Prokopenko wrote. “A giant gray zone, a kill zone stretching up to 20 kilometers from the line of contact, mixed combat formations, ambushes, search-and-strike actions, fire raids, pinpoint surgical counterattacks, encirclement of Russian units, hundreds of enemy prisoners.”

He said Russia’s war against Ukraine is “not simply a clash of armies, but the final test of two diametrically opposed systems that emerged in the post-Soviet space.”

According to Prokopenko, Ukraine’s Defense Forces — especially units that grew out of the volunteer movement, such as Azov — developed a command philosophy based on decentralization and delegated authority.

“This model is a modern interpretation of the German concept of Auftragstaktik (mission command), which was developed for conducting combat on a dynamic, nonlinear battlefield,” he wrote.

Prokopenko said the essence of that approach is that Ukraine’s senior command defines the goal of an operation and the desired end result — the “what” and the “why” — in what he called the commander’s intent.

“After that, subordinate unit commanders work out solutions for approval, either in coordination with the commander or independently,” he wrote. “In other words, how to achieve that goal is left to commanders on the ground, who have the most up-to-date understanding of the battlefield. After further adjustments or final approval of the decision, the action or operation begins.”

Russia’s military command system is the direct opposite of that used by Ukraine’s Defense Forces, Prokopenko said.

“It is a rigid, vertically integrated Soviet-style hierarchy where every step is regulated from above,” Prokopenko added. “This system was created not for maximum combat effectiveness, but to ensure political control over the army, where loyalty to the regime has always been more important than competence. As a result, such a structure leads to operational paralysis on the modern battlefield.”

He said the key proof of that systemic flaw is the chronic underdevelopment of junior officers and the “madness” of senior officers, “who are ready to sacrifice enormous numbers of personnel, down to the last soldier, to please leadership, without deviating by even one step from the plan of a superior commander, even if it was doomed to fail from the start.”

“This shows a lack of flexibility in decision-making and fear of the system when it comes to taking responsibility, lest things become even worse,” Prokopenko concluded.