With regards to the apparent performance of Russia's military in this invasion I think some points get glossed over too readily.
- Russia's annual military expenditures come to $50-60b per year for an active duty force of a little over a million. That's only about $61k spent per active duty service member.
- Combined arms operations are difficult in general. Jets move faster than APCs and don't get stuck in mud. AFVs can easily outrun their supply trains.
- Maintaining equipment is expensive and time consuming. It's also something that needs to be ingrained in a military's culture. It's not a bolt-on after the fact feature.
- Likewise logistics is hard. Like maintenance it's expensive and cultural. It's also not a bolt-on feature after the fact.
- Russia, back through the late USSR, has famous amounts of graft throughout the ranks.
So an army that doesn't have a strong cultural of logistics, equipment maintenance, or even accurate accounting is going to be clown shoes against a peer force. It really looks like they've only made the progress they have through superior numbers and even then that's been limited by logistics and maintenance.
I don't think there's some grand strategy of throwing conscripts out as the top of the spear or something. I think it's more their army inherited the worst of the Soviet system. Everyone from the NCOs up through the general staff have been fudging readiness numbers for decades. Blowing up irregular forces in Syria and war criming through Chechnya and Georgia has given the general staff a serious overestimate of their abilities.