The central obsession of the higher-ranking officers at the aerodrome where he was based was inventing ways to steal the highly purified grain alcohol that was used for cooling the MiG-25's avionics and deicing the wings. This often required that several tons of jet fuel be dumped on the ground and a nonexistent flight of the MiG-25 entered into the logbook in order to make it seem as though the alcohol had been consumed in service of the aircraft rather than at some drunken late-night dinner. A senseless waste, as he saw it, to soak hundreds of gallons of fuel into the soil and then later say there was not enough funding for proper base housing or an officers' club.

But the main source of Belenko's alienation was what he described as the Communist party's penchant for "trying to repeal the laws of nature by decree." In the case of his MiG-25, this translated into the impossible task of being ready to take on the latest U.S. military aircraft in an airplane that still used vacuum-tube technology.

One wonders if there is a similar divorce from reality inside the Kremlin today with regard to the Russian armed forces. The past few months have seen a number of grandiose promises for restoring the might and modernity of Moscow's men at arms, but even the most optimistic projections for the Russian economy fall well short of what would be needed to pay for major military initiatives.

In July, a Russian admiral, Vladimir Vysotsky, announced on the Naval Fleet Day holiday that the Russian navy would add six carriers to its force--plus all of the cruisers, destroyers, supply ships, minesweepers, etc., that form a complete carrier battle group. Russia has never had even one proper carrier battle group, has only one aircraft carrier in operation, and has demonstrated that its shipyards are not up to the task even of refitting an old Soviet-era carrier for the Indian Navy. (The shipyards where the current Russian carrier was built during the Soviet period are in Nikolaev, Ukraine, and there are no comparable facilities in Russia.)

More recently, the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, made a speech calling for a massive military modernization program and a substantial increase in defense spending. According to his statements, by 2020 Russia will have built substantial numbers of new naval vessels, will have developed a combined air defense and missile defense system with both land and space-based elements, and will have upgraded the nation's conventional forces to a "permanent state of combat readiness."

This is all just so much chest-thumping. The immense sums required to support these lavish promises will not materialize. You can't get there from here, as the old aphorism goes. The price of oil (which Russia depends on for a great deal of its state revenues) has dropped to less than half its value from this past summer, the Russian stock market is in free fall, and foreign investment has fled Russia.

President Medvedev has announced an increase in military spending, but total outlays are still far less than the U.S. defense budget, and much of what has been allocated will have to go towards undoing the years of neglect and decay during the Boris Yeltsin presidency.

The performance of the Russian armed forces during the invasion of Georgia in August showed the dismal state of Moscow's military machine. Some Russian soldiers went into battle wearing athletic shoes because there were not enough boots to go around. Russian troops stole everything they could lay hands on--particularly from the Georgian army facilities they overran. Uniforms, beds, U.S.-supplied Humvees, and toilets were even pulled off the walls by Russian forces. "They had everything; the most amazing f--ing beds, amazing f--ing barracks with sealed windows," one Russian soldier was recorded saying in a short mobile phone video that was later broadcast--awestruck like Goldilocks when she stumbled upon Baby Bear's boudoir. Apparently living conditions for soldiers have improved little in the decades since Belenko's defection.

Russian forces were able to overcome Georgian forces because of sheer numbers, but in air operations the Russians had their proverbial head handed to them. A total of 12 Russian aircraft were lost to Georgian air defense units, including one Tupolev Tu-22M Backfire bomber. By the time hostilities ceased Russian pilots were being offered lavish bonus payments if they were willing to fly missions over Georgia, and still some of them turned the offers down, preferring to stay on the ground where it was safe.

The loss of the Tu-22M is symptomatic of the deep and pervasive ills of Russia's military machine. There were no operational pilots with enough hours to fly the mission, so instructor pilots had to be press-ganged into service--only two of whom were able to eject safely. The fact that the aircraft--a medium-range strategic bomber that was originally designed to carry nuclear weapons--was misused for a reconnaissance mission is another source of embarrassment.

A colleague of mine was impolitic enough to point all of this out at a conference in London, only to learn later that one of the attendees in the audience was the Russian air attaché, who later declared himself to be offended. More often than not, this is the standard Russian response to any honest assessment of its military. It is always easier to shoot the messenger than criticize those who should be getting a good working-over for failing to do their jobs properly.

At the top of the list of Russian failures should be the intelligence agencies. Like their counterparts at the CIA and so many other spy services around the world, Russian intelligence officers have lived by the axiom that "information is not worth anything unless it has been stolen."

Almost all the data on purchases made by the Georgian air defense forces and the radar networking modernization contracts that had been carried out by Aerotechnica in Kiev and other Ukrainian firms was available in the Russian-language press, on the Internet, and from other open sources, but no one at GRU (the Russian military intelligence service) seemed to be paying any attention. The former commander of the Russian Air Force, General Anatoly Kornukov, blasted the current military leadership, telling the Interfax news agency in Moscow that "they sent the Tu-22 crew to their deaths thinking that the Georgian air defense would mount no resistance."

More recently, Medvedev announced that the Russian Navy would conduct maneuvers off the coast of Venezuela in conjunction with the armed forces of Moscow's good ally and compañero Hugo Chávez in order to show his determination to carry out this military renaissance. But it is not an activity that is sustainable or has anything other than the symbolic value of annoying the United States. It's also an enormous expenditure at a time when the basic needs for equipment, clothing, housing, and training of the men in uniform are not being met.

Such failures led to 20 Russian sailors being killed last week. A Freon-based fire extinguishing system on a nuclear submarine accidentally activated, and there were not enough breathing apparatuses on board for all personnel--a basic piece of equipment for which there is no excuse for a shortage. A former Black Sea Fleet commander, Vladimir Komoyedov, told the Russian RIA-Novosti news service that this accident was the result of "the greatest lack of professionalism and negligence."

All signs suggest that the waste and neglect that made Belenko so disdainful of the political commissars were never dealt with. So, be on the lookout for more armed men in tennis shoes carrying stolen toilets in carjacked Humvees the next time Russia decides to make mischief beyond its borders. And don't be surprised if the average Russian serviceman continues to risk being needlessly sent to an early grave.