Russian soldiers have been fooled by Ukrainian soldiers who printed huge pictures of blown-up hangars on sheets to camouflage their airbases.
A Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) analysis claims Russian troops have also been duped into wasting their priceless stores of ammunition on fake targets, including dummy US-built Himars rocket launchers..
They also have a nasty habit of taking themselves out of the battle with friendly fire.
Vladimir Putin's forces have been navigating their surroundings using out-of-date maps and military targets, making it simple for the Ukrainian army to deceive them.
On one occasion, Kyiv's troops printed pictures of destroyed airbase hangars on to large sheets and draped them over their fighter jets as camouflage.
Russian bombers looking down from the skies would see that the target had already been taken care of and move on, The Times reports.
Stumped as to how Ukrainian pilots could fly with their hangars destroyed, Russia wondered whether they had moved their planes underground into elaborate subterranean airbases.
The report claims there are a number of reasons for Russia's dismal performance, including issues with top-down command and troops making the same mistakes over and again.
But friendly fire has been one of the biggest problems for the Kremlin since the start of the invasion, the report adds.
Russian artillery has hit friendly targets, with air-defence measures designed to defend Russian pilots in the skies interfering with their own planes.
The report explains: “Fratricide has been a widespread problem for the Russian forces during their invasion of Ukraine."
“Deception has succeeded against Russian forces at all echelons and across all three service branches,” it adds.
The authors of the report Oleksandr Danylyuk and Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi were both involved in compiling Kyiv's military defences.
At the start of the war, Russia didn't know "where they were" as their antiquated maps didn't show some towns that had sprung up in the years since the maps were made.
But the RUSI warned the Kremlin thinks of its soldiers as an "inexhaustible resource" and that the Russian people don't "place a great deal of value on human life", meaning the war could continue for years.
“There is a perception that the armed forces of the Russian Federation are systemically incompetent, irredeemably corrupt, that their weapons are ineffective and unreliable, and that the force is incapable of adapting.
"This narrative is dangerous, both because it is inaccurate and also because it encourages complacency,” it adds.
