Considering he was actually in the army in his younger years, he's soon forgotten how it works.
X company is given a million roubles for tanks and equipment, this is promptly squandered on drink and loose women, only when war arrives, and the top brass think they've got 30,000 tanks and half a million shells but it turns out they've only got a thousand tanks and most of the shells are empty because russian soldiers have hollowed them out and sold the innards to the highest bidder.
This is nothing new, most Russian soldiers are ex cons and mental patients, they're there to escape the confines of B wing or because they want to eat people.
It was no different when Putin was serving. Now he thinks he has an elite force when in reality he's dragging people out of bus queues, giving them a gun and sending them to get slaughtered in Ukraine.