[jfman]

Originally Posted by Chris

Fair enough, and I never took you for one. There is however a widespread assumption that Russia is a great power, fed by decades of Russian propaganda and (it now turns out) incorrect assumptions on the part of Western experts. These are the ones who had no concept of Ukraine lasting more than a week or so, last February.

The idea of the mighty Russian bear is so ingrained in the Western psyche that at every stage of this conflict there has been a tendency to assume Ukraine has done well to get as far as it has, but it’s not going to get much further. I believe your line of thinking doesn’t arise from a desire to be a Putin cheerleader, but simply because your starting point is an internalised set of assumptions about what Russia is, a starting point that all of us have shared for many years and most still do.

It’s only by reading and following this conflict very closely since February that I have become so optimistic of a complete Ukrainian triumph. Some might think I’m obviously just being selective in my reading but I really do believe it’s possible to pull back the curtain on the Russian wizard and discover their narrative is a scam of epic proportions. They are riven with corruption, tactical ineptitude and all the disadvantages of a dictatorial government that is paranoid and highly centralised.

In Ukraine right now they have a barely functional army that is resisting total collapse only by sheer weight of numbers. The mobilised men are untrained, unequipped and in many cases unarmed. They are there to give the Ukrainians something more to shoot at, thereby slowing them down. They are buying primitive drones from Iran because they’ve used most of their own high tech missiles and can’t build more because they rely on imported Western electronics, which they can’t now get hold of. The reality Russia faces right now is that in conventional terms its homeland is effectively defenceless against a suitably motivated adversary. It just doesn’t have the manpower or the equipment to stop it. It is a weakly armed, poorly led terrorist state.

Russia does have a big pile of nuclear weapons and has attempted to leverage fear of those to dissuade Nato from supporting Ukraine, but in the last week has rowed back on those threats, almost certainly due to ever-more-assertive warnings from China and India. This is where the true long term strategic damage to Russia’s interests will be felt. Russia has been a senior ally to India and saw itself as an equal partner with China. India clearly no longer worries about giving Russia a stern talking to and what of China? Russia is going to find itself a (very) junior partner in that relationship.

Shroedinger’s Russia.

Simultaneously on its knees but ready to reap genocide throughout all of the Baltic states if even an inch of Ukrainian territory is conceded.