It's kind of a negative selection that's been going on for quite some time. Conveniently, Maxim Katz's yesterday's video is about negative selection but higher up in the government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kmwnZ4l_s
Then when you look post WW2, they were mostly just used to brutally crush a few uprisings, never really had to fight a real war until the current one.
US material aid helped a ton but the push to inflate it's importance to the end result of the war seems never ending.
Only less than 15% of lend lease supplies had arrived a year after the last axis attempt at and advance on the eastern front. The vast majority whilst incredibly helpful arrived when the axis was already rapidly retreating.
I agree that they were incredibly brutal and rapey tho. How much of that was revenge/progression of the horrors of the eastern front idk. I'm inclined to say it was a fragment of the time but there was a ton of rape by them in the Chechnyan and Georgian conflicts as well.
1 - While Russia was the biggest component, it was the Soviet army - which included Ukraine (and led by a Georgian). So you're tarring both sides of the current war in your comment.
2 - It was a World War, tragic for all parties involved. You look at each side and they had moments of brilliance and absolute disasters. The Soviet Union (nor the UK) didn't have the luxury to sit back and scale their industry because the Axis forces were literally on their front, not separated by an Atlantic Ocean. Would the SU have won without American supplies? We don't know, but to downplay the player who was involved in the biggest military operations of the war that made D Day look like a side battle (Stalingrad, Kursk, Seelow Heights, Leningrad, Operation Bagration, search any one of those) shows a lack of historical awareness.
Edit - Adding to the above - more Civilians died in the Soviet Union than the total combined military deaths of the other Allied Powers. War is hell and shouldn't be romanticised or seen as a solution.
Okay? What does this have to do with what I said? The Russians were obviously in charge of the USSR.
> We don't know, but to downplay the player
You're misreading what I wrote. I'm not talking about the importance of their contribution, but about their general competence. Even with US supplies, the USSR took absurdly huge losses against a smaller population invader, while fighting on their own home turf. That speaks to general ineffectiveness, that they could only win through overwhelming numbers.
The most important purpose of a military is to defend their country's populace. The USSR utterly failed here. You can argue that this is because the USSR was also just less economically developed than Germany, but that doesn't exactly paint the country in a flattering light either.
> The Soviet Union (nor the UK) didn't have the luxury to sit back and scale their industry
Bullshit, they could've done it earlier. Germany went back on peace to split Poland with the USSR, any idiot could see the likelihood of eventual backstabbing. Stalin knew it was coming, he was just wrong on exactly when because he didn't believe the intel he got.
> War is hell and shouldn't be romanticised or seen as a solution.
Obviously.
You mean stalin? That's who you want us to sympathize with?
Also, I would argue about legacy. The legacy, as with many things Russian, was mostly made up. The Soviet army did a lot of atrocities during, e.g. looting and rapings in WW2 in Germany (aka the "German spring"), the pointless Afghan war that killed 1mln civilians, the suppression of democracy in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s, the Chechen wars, etc. It has never been as glorious as Soviet propaganda described it. It's always been ugly and brutal.
PS. I highly recommend reading the long threads of Kamil Galeev [1] on Twitter. He did an excellent job explaining why Russia and its army are what they are.
But what are the odds those nukes even work? From what I understand, they're complex devices that require expert maintenance. What are the odds they've been properly maintained over the disastrous past 3 decades?
It's not something I'd ever want to bet on, because even if only 10% of their nukes work, that's still plenty to do tons of damage with, but considering the sorry state of their military, I'd be quite surprised if all of their nukes still worked perfectly.
I'm surprised none have gone off, frankly.
I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:
* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.
* The weapon is a dud.
I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!
The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII. Their historical level of acceptable losses is high.
(Unfortunately, Google is no longer very good at finding historical items like that.)
If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO?
I fear that the Russians will be pushed into a more "traditional" warfare with heavy air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
Also, Europe was depending on the idea that if you integrate Russian economy with the Western economy there wouldn't be reason to wage wars, just the way EU integrated historic enemies into completely peaceful union therefore there's no need to maintain large armies. Unfortunately, the method that works for EU countries doesn't work for Russia(too corrupt? too autocratic? too eastern mentality? who knows) and as a result European countries now increase their budgets for their defence.
I think it's tragic. Would have been much better if Russians sent their gas as Europe gradually transitions into renewables and Europe sent their produce to Russians and improve their lives as they diversify their economy as the fossil energy is phased out. It should have worked, EU definitely tried make it work.
I mean, who want to test how harmful a slingshot is if they can't retaliate?
Russia has an artillery based army and Ukraine doesn't have the long range weapons to destroy it, so Russia can just destroy city after city from a safe distance.
Much weaker, but not harmless indeed.
Plus, the US already send 25% of its Javelin and Stinger missiles to Ukraine and it will take many years to replenish those stocks.
Can all countries in the vicinity of Ukraine receive such numbers of missiles and support?
No, hence we need to ramp up military spending and production in case Russia gets even wilder ideas.
In general the method works, there were(are) deep economic ties growing between germany and russia for example to mutual benefit. And those sectors are devastated because of the war and were really not in favour of it.
But Russia is a bit bigger than slovakia for example, so some economic ties were apparently not enough.
Also, most of the russia population received an decrease in living standard after the soviet union fell, so democracy was off with a bad start. When your individual life is shit, it is a comfort knowing you are at least part of something great. The RUS empire. Only, that in reality it is just a brutal, rusty moloch, which more people are hopefully seeing now. And yes, it is tragic. We now have war and even if there will be peace eventually, a new iron curtain with mines will once again divide europe.
So once again we are in a "war of ideas". I hope we do not face a "new iron curtain" as you say, that would indeed be a shame.
I held so many hopes for the Russian people but foolishly thought they had escaped the prisons of thought that might bind them. So many outstanding people, some of the best writers, mathematicians, and scientists, generations of civilization and a history worth mining for gems.
I now see more clearly that the Russians (and other peoples in that region of the Earth) are neither Western nor Eastern in thought but have their own very different perceptions of the world. And unfortunately many of them seem to suffer an undeserved diminished sense of self-worth and a desire for recognition (some call it "thymos") that is perceived as not forthcoming from foreigners, whether truly present or not.
I have always believed that any Russian or "Eurasian" (if I may use that term to denote the broader groups of peoples in the region) person was as worthy or better, good or bad, strong or weak, kind, and good ... as any person whatsoever. But I fear b/c of the West's indifference and yes, the West's negligence of these peoples after the breakup of the Soviet Union, we have, as a group, not sufficiently shown the respect that is due them. We needed a "Marshall Plan" for the fall of the Soviet Union, if only to offer it.
Because they are going to besiege many cities and kill many people even if they end up losing a war, just like what happens in Ukraine right now.
If we were interested in defence, all the (small) spending would be on anti tank and anti aircraft missile systems, logistics, and training our national guard, firemen, police and other citizens. We (the west) vastly outnumber the Russians, have more advanced technology, and hugely larger industrial capacity.
This defence spending is obviously not about Russia, and not about defence, it is firstly and mainly about making money and creating jobs to get ourselves out of the current economic disaster, and secondly about preparing for war with our next official adversary, whoever the Americans decide to nominate for that.
[1] https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Monatsberichte/2022/0... (Ctrl-F "Ausgaben des Bundes nach Aufgabenbereichen", row title "Verteidigung")
Russia's was 6% of GDP , but EU easily outspended it with <2%
You deeply underestimate how much worse things could get.
After receiving tens of thousands of ATGMs, Ukraine still only destroyed a fraction of the current russian armor and equipment. Russia has many times over in storage. Sure, it will take a while to make that operational, but we shouldn't be taking any chances and just build overwhelming force to stop Russia, especially when it's so cheap for us, relatively speaking.
Plus you have to plan for the adversary being better than what you have evidence for, that's just prudent.
The mistake is that other countries are being bullied by Russia. NATO untill further escalation works.
That's what they're already doing. Except it's not with air power, because theirs is kind of a joke ( using commercial off the shelf phones and GPS to communicate and navigate), but with artillery. And it's not "anything remotely dual use", it's bomb everything, even obviously civilian targets.
2. NATO military was not really tested in full scale combat and can perform worse than expected too.
NATO has had plenty of logistical failures but it doesn't narrow it's planning to total top-down so those failures are dealt with and worked around by elements in the middle and on the field.
Moreover, lots of proper military research projects have been done. It's the actual production where they run into the corruption bottleneck: that could be solved and the giant might awaken.
Russia was/is spending something like 17% on military. Obviously they planned to use it at some point, I can't believe we were this dumb not to see it.
Russia can’t make special stuff if it can’t make boring stuff.
They can try import substitution from China but it would be difficult to move goods as the Trans-Siberian Railway is already at capacity trying to replace other goods, and even China may not be able to provide suitable replacements for parts manufactured in Europe.
2) Nukes.
3) Even though the Russian military appears increasingly incompetent, they are still capable of creating immense damage and destruction.
We badly need new trucks. I have a driver (I'm lieutenant), but have no truck, because my truck was used in Chornobyl, so it's not operable now because of 30 years of out of service at conservation. If I have a truck, I can swap my cabin from Chornobyl truck to new truck and create a working communication station, but I cannot find a cheap truck to buy.
If you have a barely working truck, please, sent it to Ukraine, Rivne, Ukrainian Army, 55 OPZ, 1 battalion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/why-second-han...
Basically long bombing campaigns targeting everything from military targets, to TV-stations, to train stations, while the opponent was unable to respond, leaving them broken and demoralized.
1. The latest Russian invasion was a wake-up call. Much bigger than in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and East Ukraine. Especially Germany and France have been attempting to reach a lasting peaceful relationship with Russia through trade and agreements. Any hope anybody in Europe might have had of that has evaporated now.
2. Fear that the US will not be there to defend Europe in the future (Trump threatened to leave NATO - and might be re-elected). One of the (fair) reasons behing Trump's threats were European NATO countried not paying their fair share (2% of GDP in 2014 agreement).
For all my life I've opposed defense spending and supported reduction of defense spending, but not anymore. As long as Putin rules Russia, Russia is a real threat to any neighbouring country. Even if my own country is relatively safe, I think it's important we help other countries to defend themselves against this threat.
I would still strongly prefer friendly relationships with Russia, but Putin has made that impossible. We need to stop buying Russian gas as soon as possible.
Even being not very good at war they've been able to do a lot of damage and war crimes.
Plus, some of those countries have had pretty terrible militaries themselves; the head of the German army admittedly recently that their capability as a fighting force is very limited. A lot of Europe was basically coasting militarily because they thought war in Europe was over forever.
Plus Russia could probably do some damage and would be difficult if not impossible to completely take out due to the size of their land mass.
Active personnel 1,014,000
Reserve personnel 2,000,000
Europe hasn't had an army to speak of for decades (and for a good reason). So "doubling military expenditures" for most of Europe is "going from nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
They don't have to be "pushed". They have been basically doing that since the war started.
That is sheer numbers. The EU has 1 million active military personnel on paper. Of that, less than 30k are "land troops prepared for deployed and sustained operations" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
If only I was discussing that, right?
> And Ukraine have been conducting mobilization since the war started
Yes, but the original question was, "Why is Europe increasing defense spending". The sum total of Europe's deployed forces is smaller than Ukraine's was before this war.
Russia's defence budget is ~50 billion dollars per year.
The combined defence budgets of all of Europe is ~200 billion dollars per year, which is four times as large as Russia's. And that's from before the Ukraine invasion. The bulk of that defence budget belongs to NATO members who already have decades of experience in working together and having a shared command structure. We outspend Russia four to one, and if all European NATO members bump their defence budgets to the 2% requirement, we're gonna outspend Russia seven to one.
Going from four times the defence budget or Russia to seven times the defence budget of Russia is nowhere near going from "nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> Active personnel 1,014,000
Oh no, a million demotivated peasants with rusty Soviet-era weapons! Whatever shall we do? Best we roll over and let Russia invade and take whatever they want!
You're also stuck in the cold war mentality that Russia is still as big and strong as the Soviet Union was, and it's just not true anymore. Europe has three times the population, four times the defence budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. Russia has had three decades of unparalleled corruption and decay, and we're supposed to feel threatened?!?
No. Stop. Re-evaluate. Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
> Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
If only I ever said anywhere whether I thought Russia was an existential threat to Europe. Stop. Re-evaluate. There's a specific point I was replying to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
That's some goal post moving. You were explicitly talking about military expenditures, and your claim that Europe's military expenditures doubling is insignificant is completely laughable given that the current level is already 4x Russia's.
The only reason you pivoted to active troops, pretending we were talking about that all along, is because that's the only number that's bigger on the Russian side of the equation.
Where do you get these claims? Most European countries are part of NATO which demands a modernized standing army as part of its membership requirements.
While it's true that most countries don't spend the ridiculous amount of their wealth on arms as USA does, the armies of European countries are far from not existing.
I couldn't be bothered to look beyond Wikipedia, so going by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
1. Most countries spend significatly less than is required by NATO. Nato requires 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. In the EU, only 7 countries are at that threshold, or above it, and of those Finland is not in NATO.
2. France has the largest active military personnel at 200k, and of those, 17k are "prepared for deployed and sustained operations".
At this point all of EU couldn't get an army to respond to Russia's current force engaged in Ukraine.
This is not strictly true and there’s no such legal requirement, only a political one. Case in point id Iceland, which is a NATO member but has no armed forces to speak of.
Also the larges part of any military are non combat support personnel. Weather its people building things or transporting them or fixing them. Also manning various stations. Providing security for military installation. Military police. Military intelligence. etc.
So out of 1m people russia only has around 250k combat troops. 190k of which are currently engaged in Ukraine.
And one of the reasons we see all this logistical problems is that Russia has too much combat troops (or too little support) for its support force. In other militaries its usually from 6 to 9 support people for every combat role.
Also remember SU was over 300M (and that without Warsaw pact nations). Russia is less than 150m.
So no Russia does not have endless supply of troops, unless they start mobilization.
Europe and the countries bordering Russia have a lot of personnel. Sweden even reactivated military duty.
There's a big benefit in decentralized warfare that the NATO has been doing that Russia can't emulate.
Countries bordering Russia have very few actively deployed forces. Sweden has 750 ground troops "ready for deployment and sustained operations". Seven hundred and fifty. Finland has ~1750.
> benefit in decentralized warfare that the NATO has been doing that Russia can't emulate
Those decentralized troops have to get to the conflict zones first.
Wartime strength is 280 k.
Reserves train yearly.
That's a lot more than 1750...
Actie personel is 24 k, reserve = 31.8 k and Paramilitary = 22 k. - https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-de...
That's way more than 750 people too...
Where did you even get those numbers?
And an ill-maintained tank from the Soviet/ww2 era is still a tank.
I remember reading somewhere, maybe the Guardian, that:
- just 9% of the total russian forces are now deployed against Ukraine
- they thought it will be an easy victory so they sent the lowest grade troops they had.
Contrary to the lowest grade, it seems that many elite forces were used : https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/destination-disaster-r... unfortunately they were deployed in an amateur way using a reckless plan. If the reinforcement strategy had come off then everyone would say that it was utterly brilliant, but gambles like this happen in war all the time. We like to venerate the ones that work and to talk about brilliant generals and the glamour of battle. In reality, as in this case they mostly fail and the troops get bogged down and killed.
The Russians have done a surprising and smart thing, which shows that someone in Moscow has the light on still. They've pulled out of the north and completely changed strategy - this shows a strategic flexibility that's really quite impressive, and unusual for a totalitarian regime. The problem that they have now is that the situation in the south is much more difficult than it would have been if they had gone for it at the outset. They don't have much of a reserve because Russia is so vast and the Russians have serious commitments at the border with China and North Korea and so on.
They were unable to effectively resupply troops in the North, who were out of food, low on fuel, and lacking supply trucks. Ukranians blew up bridges and local railroads and attacked their lines of supply and communication. Belorussians kept sabotaging rail lines. Russians never got control of large cities where major roads pass, and couldn’t control the airport enough to fly in supplies. At the point they retreated they had been completely stuck with no progress for more than a week, and it was only a matter of time before they were surrounded.
They chose (mostly) orderly retreat over waiting a few more weeks and getting routed and destroyed.
This isn't the cause by the actions of a single piece of shit (Putin) but the consequences of unchecked sistemic corruption that spans for decades across the entire government apparatus.
I laughed out loud when I saw pictures of the ERA plates on Russian tanks were actually filled with cardboard because what should have been the Russian army modernization, is now parked in the biggest most luxurious yachts in the world and in the most desirable real estate in Europe and North America.
So, as a European who's country had been under forced Russian occupation, and the puppet communist regime there caused scars that will still last for decades, I'm chuck full of joy to see Russia's army being crippled from inside by it's own corrupt system and the greed of it's own leaders. 10/10
I already have my apartment at 20C and can probably tolerate a bit lower if it means starving the Russian army and saving Ukrainian lives.
Still, I expected the Russian government propaganda to spin this news into something like "Heroic Moskva cruiser managed to successfully destroy two enemy Neptune missiles with its hull, causing it to be promoted to the rank of submarine ".
But the Soviet Union fell thirty years ago, an entire generation ago. The Soviet Union had 280 million people, more than the US had at the time. Big. Scary. But Russia today has only 140 million people. Over half the population just up and left when given the chance. They said "thanks, but no thanks" to Moscow.
Sure, Russia still has a big military budget, but their GDP isn't that great. Their GDP is much smaller than Italy's, alone. Smaller than France's, alone. Smaller than Germany's, alone. Hell, even the five Nordic countries have a higher combined GDP than Russia has. Growing up in the Nordics during the cold war meant having to think about Russia as an enormous big bad who could crush us completely if they wanted to. But now, our combined economies are larger.
Russia is corrupt, and has been corrupt for an entire generation. And it's been corrupt on a scale that is unprecedented compared to itself in the past, and compared to the rest of Europe. We complain about the military-industrial complex and how much waste there is, but military contractors in the west actually deliver stuff, whereas all the corrupted half-assery of the Russian military is being exposed now.
The combined defence budget of the EU is about 4 times larger than Russia's. Since the end of the cold war, the EU has been prosperous, peaceful, and happy. We've invested in our defence and grown stronger over the last thirty years, while Russia has declined.
We in the EU have over three times the population, over four times the military budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. We have nukes and tanks and aircraft carriers and submarines and stealth fighters of our own. And yet so many still view Russia as a threat, as a bigger and stronger foe.
This debacle sure has been eye-opening to me, and I hope it's been that way for everyone else stuck in the cold-war mentality.
Simple. The EU is not military united but it's pretty much a "every man for himself" kind of thing outside of NATO or a direct attack, but the EU or NATO is currently not under attack so some people see Ukraine as "more of you problem than a me problem"… so other than sending some aid to Ukraine most people don't want to go to war with Russia or suffer crippling energy shortages for Ukraine.
EU leaders are also not immune from kleptocratic greed and external and internal corruption.
Austria is more than happy to keep pumping money into Russia in exchange for cheap gas, as that gas runs 80% of their industry, and several elite Austrian politicians were given top jobs on boards of Russian oil and gas companies to lobby for them and against nuclear or other alternatives, or have straight up offered their support to Russian oligarchs in under-the-table business deals ( the infamous "Ibiza scandal").
Good luck replacing that gas on a whim after several decades of Russian lobbying that lead to the current status quo.
Deliver stuff nobody needs? LOL, the American oligarchs aren't much better. Just because they use a different word (lobbying instead of bribing) doesn't make it any less of a corrupt system.
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/77-billion-raptor-22-fighter-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/air-force-admits-f-35-...
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/18/congress-agai...
At least in the US, via lobbying, the bribes are transparent and you can follow the money and see who's pulling the strings.
This is much better than everything being done under the table and assuming there is no corruption because we don't have lobbying, like the classical misconception we have in Europe.
How do you think Trump and company got in?
Centuries, really. The inveterate kleptocracy that is Russia goes back further than the Soviets. The only real crime that exists for the Russian elite is stealing more than allowed. That was true for the Boyars, the Nomenklatura and it remains true for the oligarchy.
Corruption in modern Russia is unique to Putin's regime - he used it (and still uses) as a tool to concentrate power - he puts in position of power only corrupt officials as a mean to get full loyalty - officials not loyal enough can be easily blackmailed, secret services have enough "kompromat" to put any government official into jail but are waiting for a signal from above. Corruption is the foundation for what in Russia called the "vertical of power", which essentially means that a person in a power structure have almost unlimited (limited only by Putin, but not by the law) power over people below.
Looks like this tool has spun out of control.
It was actually fatal. I've studied the corruption that emerged under the Soviets; it was systemic and, in fact, necessary to mitigate the crippling adversities created by Soviet ideology. It is the primary reason the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago.
When selecting who to delegate power to, all soviet leaders selected people who are loyal to them and suitable for the job. Loyalty was more important than competence so government was full of incompetent people, but competence was not a disqualifying factor so some of them was able to do the job.
In Putin's power structure people who not steal and cannot be easily blackmailed are not promoted high enough. Being not corrupt _is_ a disqualifying factor. Putin at least in the beginning of his career maintained visibility of a country with the rule of law, so instead jailing opponents on a whim he jailed them for breaking the law, but the law was enforced selectively only for ones who are not fully loyal.
As a result in modern Russia personal enrichment is a much bigger problem that it was in Soviet Union. Soviet nomenklatura [1] was rich compare to poor population but their quality of life was not much better than for upper-middle class in the US. The same nor the case for modern Russia.
Failure of soviet economy as I know was not result of corruption - much more resources were wasted than stolen. Unfortunately I cannot provide any sources here - all I read was in Russian and I cannot find translations to English.
I've seen this inefficiency myself in form of many thousands tons of trees which were cut so harvesting organization would meet KPI for amount of harvested wood but left to rot in the forest because an organization which should transport the wood had not enough capacity to do this (but likely transported all volume on paper, which you may say is corruption, but resources were wasted, not stolen).
My country was behind an iron curtain and one of the motto's of that time was: "If one doesn't embelish from the state it means one's embelishing from their family". Even with democracy this mentality won't fully go away for generations. Russia continued on that trajectory to a worse state.
If the US starts WWIII, nobody will be left alive in Russia to care. If Russia starts WWIII, likewise, and it's better if the warheads don't work anyway. Meanwhile, that dacha on the Black Sea coast isn't going to pay for itself, nor is the boat that comes with it.
What worries me is that this is happening in the U.S. as well.
I mean you can definitely argue for inefficiency in the MIC, but you don't see people literally just stealing millions from the allocated budget and shifting it to their bank accounts or megayachts.
I am not saying it’s an identical situation, which seems to be the assumption of some. However, the oligarchical nature of the U.S. is not slowing down.
Contracts are definitely awarded to companies based on their political connections, and not necessarily merits. Look at the whole Halliburton/Cheney shitshow in Iraq for a recent example.
We're talking $40 billion worth of (cost-plus!!!) contracts awarded to a company that was widely viewed as incompetent by the soldiers on the ground, followed by the vice-president getting a position on the board of said company when he retired. This is after he got a $30 million golden parachute after leaving them in 2001.
It's just that the US manages to prolong this much longer than others.
In the west we have free press looking into it and exposing the theft, plus, the theft in the west has very complex schemes to make it look legit on the surface and to make sure nothing sticks to our Teflon politicians, but in Russia they don't need to worry about any red tape BS, they can just shove their hands in the public purse and take as much as they want and go directly to the Lamborghini dealership or the casino without any accountability, and if any reporter looks too deeply into their theft, they get death threats or even death through very suspicious circumstances.
It's orders if magnitude worse.
It took me years to get used to the heat indoors when I moved to Scandinavia.
"Are you cold now?"
"Yes sir!"
"Now get dressed!", "Are you still cold?"
"No sir!"
Except then they were being attacked, had the Russian winter on their side, and had conscription and the heavy industry fully mobilised. Plus eventually lots of American-made kit (which wasn’t necessarily better weaponry but at least was made to plan, had spare parts etc).
It took the Russians a while to transition to the great victory in the “great patriotic war”.
Incidentally, this is why I don’t write them off yet, though I sincerely hope Ukraine clocks in a big win. Russians do have the resilience and stubbornness to push through. Whether that can overcome decades of corruption etc remains to be seen.
For example, if you are incapable to build a house, then you need to hire someone to build it for you. If you have no money, but you have an army, then you can just enslave him instead. Russian Empire is the jail of nations.
Much of the “allies” produced simple bits of kit, but the advanced parts of them, designing etc were generally kept in Russia just in case.
Ukraine is a bit of an exception, I guess because it was seen as more of an “insider”. This is why their weapons industry is actually so comprehensive (anti ship missiles, anti tank weapons etc).
Only for Westerners Soviet == Russian, which puzzles me absolutely.
That way was the realisation (continuation?) of the “Great Russia” project. People may not have civil liberties, may be poor and terrorised, but the outside is terrified too.
Did the Ukrainians, Georgians and Estonians want nuclear standoffs with the US for its own sake? Did they want to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968?
Also, we're bad at geography, and "former soviet state" is easy / lazy.
Finally, I know lots of Ukrainians that grew up in Russia and vice versa, and can't really keep all the permutations straight. (As I can't for my colleagues from any continent.)
But I get your point, and now it makes more sense to me.
I see in Putin more of that monarchist strain — chauvinism from the times of Imperial Russia, which indeed was so much focused on that "RRR-Russian" identity, much more "blood and soil" ideology. And add to that Late Soviet state "efficiency".
I assume Putin has already gulaged some scapegoats that his cronies found responsible for this current mess.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fsbs-beseda-in-prison...
Russia has definitely been losing the propaganda war, that's for sure.
As for mechanized force, they've been taking far fewer losses than Russia, due to having so many western portable anti-tank missiles + defender's advantage. And now that they're starting to get more armored vehicles from the West, things are looking up.
Russia expected to win easily and they've been getting hammered instead.
I don't know why it should surprise anyone. People who make Putin unhappy end up with "accidental" polonium poisoning. Is there any reason to suspect the Russian military hasn't suffered some for that? Or that the Russian military-industrial complex hasn't suffered some due to looting, corruption, and incompetence?
I'm not delusional. Russia has the resources (and human bodies) to waste on this for as long as it takes. If the leadership has the political will they will probably win eventually. It seems unlikely to be worth the cost but Russia would hardly be the first country to pay $100 for a penny in that regard.
Surprisingly, I’ve found AlJazeera to be quite professional, if slightly biased for up-to-date news.
Reports from rusi.org are interesting, but not free and some do have a whiff of opinion/cheering, which is rather suspect.
Books by Mark Galeotti offer insight into the various Soviet and Russian conflicts and into their military forces.
It is from 2015, but describes the process from the collapse of the Soviet Union and how Russia turned into effectively a fascist dictatorship.
https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/garry-kasparov/win...
But keep believing in that, it will make our job easier.