As the Putin regime built on the foundations laid by Yeltsin, the armed forces were once again held up and glorified as a pillar of Russian identity. Russian soldiers who committed war crimes in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine (before the current conflict) never faced disciplinary action and the military as a whole never absorbed any institutional culture that may help minimize civilian casualties. Western militaries have increasingly moved in the other direction, even at the expense of operational tempo. But in the Russian military, no such safeguards exist. Nor has its supposed professionalization done anything to curtail such behaviour. The tragic scenes coming out of Ukraine illustrate this. Officers all throughout the chain of command will order overwhelming firepower against any target in order to force it into submission — a nod to its playbook from Chechnya. Soldiers of all units and ranks find themselves in hostile territory among a population they have been told hates them. These soldiers are armed and there are no restraints. This is a recipe for systematic atrocities and such atrocities have and will continue to happen in Ukraine.

There was perhaps an opportunity in the 1990s to force the military to change its culture and subject it to more strenuous oversight, but those opportunities like so many others, were missed. Reforms that followed the 2008 war against Georgia were meant to increase fighting agility and lethality while maintaining cohesion in the face of the enemy. Left to one side were notions of ensuring soldiers and officers were trained in the rules and conduct of war as specified by the Geneva protocol. So the military regained its discipline and cohesive power in small scale operations, yet stayed unrepentant of its past actions. That stood in sharp contrast to its Western counterparts for whom the need to emphasise an avoidance of War Crimes at all levels became a crucial touchstone of military culture. Today’s atrocities are all because Russia’s military never outgrew the mindset of its Soviet forebears; it remains focused on lethality and victory at all costs. Its institutions do not shy away from brutality and maintain a disregard for human life, which clears the way new atrocities without accountability.