Corrupt relative to democracies, or really just most other countries in the world.

And historically the Russian/Soviet army has always underperformed for its size, their notable successes have generally been due to being able to crush their opponent in sheer mass of conscripted bodies. Cases where having a lot of people don't help, like ships and aircraft, often end in embarrassing defeats against far smaller foes. A good case study here is the Battle of Tsushima.

> Corrupt relative to democracies, or really just most other countries in the world.

I’ll reiterate. You described it as something that Putin caused (in part).

> The one that is backed by historical evidence: widespread corruption rotted the organization from the core. Putin is running his country like the world's largest petro-Mafia, with poor internal controls that allowed for a widespread looting of the state's assets.

But it has always been like that. At least since it was born from the Soviet Union.

But now you change your tune to to it being corrupt “relative to democracies”.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make? Putin is corrupt and as a result his military underperforms. Historically the Russian and Soviet systems were rife with both corruption and military losses. This was my original point.

Putin may have inherited a corrupt system, but he certainly didn't do anything to rectify the problem and most likely made it worse.

He is actually very lucky that the world has been relatively peaceful during his reign, it appears an ambitious Japan could have bitten off a chunk of Russia if they wanted to and his military would have been at a disadvantage trying to stop them. Putin also got very lucky that the rest of the world didn't get involved in the invasion of Crimea, but that seems to have made him cocky and now he's tipped his hand and blown his bluff.