The Moscow Times report about the aerobatics display crash near Zhukovka at the weekend contained the interest fact that "In February, a report compiled after the crash of a MiG-29 on a training flight in southern Siberia found that at least a third of the nation’s fighter jets were unsafe and should be written off or repaired." This should be so scandalous that heads should roll and there should be a major enquiry. But it barely caused a ripple of interest in Russia. I remember reports from last year's fighting in South Ossetia that the Russian side got a nasty shock from the quality of Georgia's anti-aircraft defence, mainly because their Israeli and U.S. equipment was so good.

The bottom line is that Russia's military is riddled with incompetence at all levels, and is feared by nobody. It's galling to understand this fact, because if you watch Russian TV, you would believe that Russia's army is elite and feared by the rest of the world, especially the spetsnazy, like the Alfa or Vympel brigades, who regularly congratulate themselves on air, in a way that the SAS or Delta forces would never dream of doing. They think that the Nord-Ost theatre or Beslan sieges were victories, and don't realise that the civilised world looks on in horror at their ineptness.

This is what happens in a government without civil society or press. There is simply no way of actually checking if government employees are doing a good job, because there is so little feedback. If any information does actually get to the leadership, it can be dismissed as being politically motivated, coming from enemies of the system. You get this kind of incompetence at all levels of government - when you deal with the government, you pretty much expect them to make some sort of mistake in processing your information. This happened to a friend of mine who was applying for a residency permit - they lost his application because someone spelled his name wrong when transcribing one of his application forms (no scanning or online entry, naturally), and we had similar problems when applying for a work permit: they switched the nationalities for me and my boss, which caused endless problems.

What does this mean for the future of Russia? It means that the State will gradually be less and less able to deal with the tasks in front of it. There was a small wake-up call during the Kursk submarine disaster, where it was clear that Russia had no capacity to rescue from the submarine, even though it was only in 100 metres or so of water. Plus it was clear that it was incompetence that led to the sailors' deaths. The Russian government is becoming less and less fit for purpose. Either things will carry on getting better, and presumably the logical end of this process is the same as in 1917 - probably the main reason for the revolution was that the Tsarist regime was completely incapable of running the country. The bureaucracy was essentially able to use the popular discontent to switch to a new system of government, rather like a parasite switching hosts. They could switch back to a sort of monarchy, or to a quasi-theocratic regime. Of course, they could always try democracy, but that would just be signing their own death warrant.