Sadly (by a given perspective, by no means universal) even if Russia's pre-invasion estimated military potential is shown to be deficient to the revealed reality[1], there's no change in the impression that they have a working Big Red Button.
On ground-war alone (supported by conventional air and sea) I think they are a broken force, mostly, concentrating what they can spare of what still works on the current limited fronts. In a pre-nuclear time, they'd be considered a sitting-duck for any attack the West would care to launch.
In the attitude of an even earlier age (before a couple of World Wars greatly reduced the territorialising and appropriation that always used to happen when armies moved across the continents) Russia might well have been losing actual land, various exclaves (Kaliningrad, probably, just because it is potentially annoying to the neighbours) and other fringes[3], possibly big chunks, perhaps 'persuade' the likes of Belorussia to switch allegience. - But that's an unfashionable attitude to take, these days[4].
(Yeah, as ninjaed, they would also have been necessarily starting with the better unification of top-end control. But I still think they'd have been found lacking - if not so much - applying one of those to the attempt at the hydra-attack that they thought they'd be able to sustain.)
[1] Not helped by the use of such power, by those who should have known what they had available. The obvious initial tactic was an attack-in-breadth that was supposed to accomplish a combination of decapitating, disemboweling and also pulling the rug from under the feet of what remained of the still-twitching corpse. It failed for any number of reasons of over-reach and/or under-estimation. Had the attack been more to do what they are now currently doing[2] and 'properly established the "legitimacy" of the breakaway states', on a more limited front, they possibly could have achieved that aim before the world blinked. Forced Ukraine's government to suck it up as they chose the line they'd pull up at, not so obviously slowed, even by the existing Donbas defensive lines, and hidden the losses they inevitably took in getting there. Instead of trying a massively-multi-clawed pincer-movement that (it turns out) they were totally unable to pull off, losing a lot of their very few elite units in silly ways and bogging down (or worse) their pseudo-conscripts that someone should have known were just not properly prepared and/or motivated.
[2] Not sure if the land-bridge to the Crimea would have been a useful or necessary part of this, given how much difficulty it was to actually accomplish in our reality. Crimea is important as a naval asset and (minimally, given the proximity of much more native-Russia) as an Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, but it doesn't help 'rationalise' the territory to create a corridor (in hindsight) when established post-2014 sea and bridge links can ensure that it's not particularly vulnerable under current circumstances.
[3] Any bits that looked attractive enough. To be (over?)reached for in return.
[4] Even if it might appear to have inspired US foreign policy a bit (and Israel, if that's not just a case of circumstancial necessity), it's more like the holdouts of Russia and China and their various client-states who seem to actually still want to (re)build their empires, by various means. Of course, righting "past wrongs" is a tricky motivation, given you can pick-and-choose a golden age that clashes with someone else's alternate vision of "when things were right". Or currently are.
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Topic: Emotional Responses to War in Ukraine - Personal Diary & Mutual Support (Read 137098 times)