Thanos Thanos:
I'd wager a bet that there's lots of old Cold Warriors from the Western side just amazed at how truly terrible Russia is against anyone who can fight back like the Ukrainians have. And amazed too at how putting Western weapons into someone's possession turns it into a lopsided fight where the Russian pukes are at a massive disadvantage. And those old soldiers probably realize with a certainty too now that all we had to be afraid of from the Russians was their nuclear weapons and spy apparatus. In any straight-up fight the West prevails, even when outnumbered in terms of combat personnel.
I think what we've seen in these last 6 months is the corruption of the Russian armed forces command. They learnt well from Putin's corruption, and emulated it as best they could.
Russia may have been a theoretically competent force, the systemic failing of maintenance procedures seems to have been what hobbled them. Tanks that break down. Supply trucks whose tires have rotted because they were never moved. Missiles that misfire because they were not properly maintained and stored. Thousands of hectares of rusting hulks that were counted as in combat inventory. Artillery that have fired hundreds too many rounds without being stripped and rebuilt.
Commanders took the money that would have paid for maintenance, and put it in their pockets. I bet they did the same for costs to train their staff. And that they are putting untrained poor people on the battlefield to block officers from bullets does nothing for their battle prowess.
If they committed their actually well trained and well equipped troops, there may have been a harder fight for Ukraine. But with Western backing, the Ukrainians will always win. And if the lines hold though the winter, that will be another 6 months of rotating Ukrainian troops through NATO training camps, while Russian soldiers replay the battle of Lenningrad from the German perspective with no clothes, no food, no relief, and no hope.
If anyone wants a growth industry right now, it'll be building POW camps in Ukraine, and later reconstructing cities.