Nah, not second best. That’s probably just Americans that still haven’t registered that the Soviet Union is gone. Generally there was an awareness that the glory days of the USSR was gone and that Russia’s small economy could only maintain a crude army.
However, people didn’t think that it was THIS bad. This is bad even for Russia’s military budget, where one can only assume that there was a lot of corruption on all levels to produce the state of the army at the start of the war. And of course, with things like this, it just got worse by the day.
Eh, you can never be too sure that they’re that incapable. There was a post from some Ukrainians the other day, saying that despite all the articles deeming the Russian military tragically useless, there are still some bloodthirsty and horrendous people fighting for Russia out there on the battlefield. And it is a bloody battlefield for both sides, whether the people there want to be a part of it or not.
But on the other hand I suppose it is reassuring for western countries citizens to read all the articles saying how weak Russia might be.
Russia spent a lot of advertising and propaganda money to seem that way. T14 and SU57 were essentially just ads trying to say ‘we’re still relevant and modern!’ It benefited their arms sales, as well as some diplomatic advantages. But that all falls away when it’s actually put to the test.
I mean, most countries do that in various ways. There are two differences for Russia in that matter.
They actually had a lot of Soviet weapons still around. Like, in quantity Russia was playing in the big leagues. The issue was just, of course, that a lot of it was unusable and got worse over the years with lacking maintenance and with technology getting more and more obsolete. Nevertheless, Russia had certainly a lot of arms and vehicles.
The Soviet Union was quite powerful and the image has still stuck with people and Russia did its best with parades and all to pretend that the glory is still with Russia. I put a bit of that blame also on American media repeating the image of the powerful Soviet Union as a dangerous adversary.
The war in Ukraine made it clearer than ever that Russia is only a shadow of what the Soviet Union once was in power projection.
Crazy that two years ago we thought this was the second best military in the world. They’ve currently got the second best military in Ukraine.
Nah, not second best. That’s probably just Americans that still haven’t registered that the Soviet Union is gone. Generally there was an awareness that the glory days of the USSR was gone and that Russia’s small economy could only maintain a crude army.
However, people didn’t think that it was THIS bad. This is bad even for Russia’s military budget, where one can only assume that there was a lot of corruption on all levels to produce the state of the army at the start of the war. And of course, with things like this, it just got worse by the day.
Eh, you can never be too sure that they’re that incapable. There was a post from some Ukrainians the other day, saying that despite all the articles deeming the Russian military tragically useless, there are still some bloodthirsty and horrendous people fighting for Russia out there on the battlefield. And it is a bloody battlefield for both sides, whether the people there want to be a part of it or not.
But on the other hand I suppose it is reassuring for western countries citizens to read all the articles saying how weak Russia might be.
Russia spent a lot of advertising and propaganda money to seem that way. T14 and SU57 were essentially just ads trying to say ‘we’re still relevant and modern!’ It benefited their arms sales, as well as some diplomatic advantages. But that all falls away when it’s actually put to the test.
I mean, most countries do that in various ways. There are two differences for Russia in that matter.
They actually had a lot of Soviet weapons still around. Like, in quantity Russia was playing in the big leagues. The issue was just, of course, that a lot of it was unusable and got worse over the years with lacking maintenance and with technology getting more and more obsolete. Nevertheless, Russia had certainly a lot of arms and vehicles.
The Soviet Union was quite powerful and the image has still stuck with people and Russia did its best with parades and all to pretend that the glory is still with Russia. I put a bit of that blame also on American media repeating the image of the powerful Soviet Union as a dangerous adversary.
The war in Ukraine made it clearer than ever that Russia is only a shadow of what the Soviet Union once was in power projection.