[user104658]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

russia have already scaled back their ambitions from recovering the soviet era territory across europe to capturing a region of ukraine that in the majority is sympathetic to russia, so, in terms of conventional war they are ****ed for at least a couple of years. It really depends what their future aims are, flattening a country is not going to expand their reach, influence or wealth

I still think obviously NATO expansion was a large part of it, I also suspect that undermining the system of oil & gas trading being linked to the US dollar was a large part of it as well... and I think they may well have achieved both of those aims. Now the question is to what degree they want to "save face" as they frankly have tipped their hand a bit in terms of what power they have. It's been long-suspected of course but it's now fairly clear that it's true; their standing army consists mostly of outdated tech and poorly trained/unmotivated soldiers. Which is inevitable with a mandatory military service requirement, quite frankly. People will fight for a strong ideology, people will fight if they've chosen to do so as a career... people with no ideology AND who didn't choose to arm up as their career? They're going to do the bare minimum to not look like a deserter whilst keeping themselves as safe as possible.