Russia is struggling with Ukraine's invasion because of its dysfunctional military command: analysts

• Ukraine is continuing to make progress in its audacious attack on Russia.
• Russia's response is being hampered by confused command structures, The Institute for the Study of War said.

Two weeks into the attack that took the Russian military off guard, Ukraine is continuing to make progress in its incursion into the Kursk region.

Ukraine's army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Tuesday that Ukrainian forces were now 22 miles into Russia. The Kremlin is deploying thousands of troops from the front line in Ukraine to help stop them.

However, The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Russia continues to "complicate and bureaucratize" the military response to the attack.

It said that "complex and overlapping responsibilities and the seemingly ever-growing list of actors the Kremlin has tasked with responding to the Ukrainian incursion" were impeding its response.

It echoes previous comments by the Soufan Center think tank which said that Ukraine exploited the disorganization of Russia's border defenses to make its surprise attack on Kursk.

On Tuesday, the Kremlin appointed Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov as deputy of the Russian defense ministry "Coordinating Council" tasked with organizing the response to the incursion in Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk oblasts.

The ISW said that's in addition to the National Defense Control Center's task force tasked with dealing with the invasion and the creation of three new military groupings to respond to the attack.

Russia's internal security service, the FSB, has also been ordered to launch a "counterterrorism operation against the invasion, with Russia's military forces and Rosgvardia, the Russian national guard, all now operating in Kursk.

The ISW said the complex command structure would likely create "confusion" and "friction" between the various agencies organizing the response.

Experts say Russia's military has long suffered problems with inexperienced officers and excessively rigid and complex command structures.

After suffering steep casualties and serious setbacks in the first two years of the war, Russia launched a massive reorganization of its military earlier this year.

Kiril Shamiev, in an article for the European Council on Foreign Relations in May, said that they'd be unlikely to work because of "endemic problems of political leadership and civilian control of the military."

Russia was slow to react to the Ukraine invasion, allowing several days to pass before it diverted enough troops to slow the incursion and its leaders reportedly ignored intelligence of a Ukrainian military build-up on the border.

Analyst Pavel K Baev, in an article for the George C Marshall Center for European Security Studies in 2019, characterized Russia as a "colossal and typically self-serving bureaucracy" whose characteristics "constitute a natural interface with the bureaucratic trait in the military culture."