my impression is the Russian military abuse new recruits until they turn them into rapist serial killer type personalities
From my experience. I would hazard the guess that that is most likely true of all militaries, and maybe especially so of conscript(draft) militaries. It was certainly true of our (mostly draftee) military during the VietNam era.
A little background:
During WW2 a major and his team did a forensic analysis of the German dead on a battlefield, and discovered that only about 10% of our guys were doing all of the killing.
Damned inefficient.
Imagine if only one out of 10 bullets would fire---that's probably a fairly easy thing to fix.
OK so you have one in 10 soldiers hitting the enemy.
Possible causes
defective weapons
poor marksmanship
or perhaps most soldiers do not want to kill the enemy
so
check the weapons---Not the problem(though, i found the m1 carbine to be about worthless as tits on a boar)
OK Lets work on improving marksmanship
and that helped---a little bit---not enough
so we are left with the mind
Most people are not natural born killers---that is usually frowned on in a civilized society.
Ok then, how to break down the mind of a civilian and rebuild it as the mind of a killer of men?
Brutality is the quickest way to alter a mind.
Just keep at it until you have a battalion of men ready to kill
then dehumanize the enemy---call them slopes, gooks, chinks, etc...
and that helped ---a little bit more
and still the number of misses was larger than the number of hits
what is a military to do?
At the beginning of basic training you shoot at targets that look like targets.
Then, as your mind is altered, you shoot at targets that look like silhouettes of men
and that helped---a little bit more
and still the number of misses was larger than the number of hits
gee darn
This problem just would not go away
and in Vietnam many would do what was called spray and pray(empty a clip)
Even lousy shots can hit the occasional enemy if enough led is sent downrange
(but, we lost that war)
I suspect that marksmanship is difficult to master for adults
I suspect that many things are best learned at certain stages of development
Unfortunately in the process of remaking the mind, many problem solving skills are lost
much like poor Draco----who in exasperation came up with "many crimes---one punishment"---death
war sux