Russia - threadbanned users in OP

General Mark Hertling (former commander of the US Army in Europe) says he's had his suspicions for over a decade that the Russian army was of a very poor calibre. He's basing this on personal experiences too - he visited Russia on three different occasions and was shown around military installations, watched Russian troops training etc.

Yeah but nuclear war chief.

That’s not good.

Have you ever noticed that lots of different news websites will all report the same news stories at more or less the same time? Do you think that each of these does independent research to confirm facts and then they all simultaneously reach the same conclusions and then independently report the same story, amazingly, using exactly the same wording and photos?

I'll let you in on a little secret, only one of them comes up with the story, the rest just cut and paste it. It's the same with stuff like Russian force estimates - and they are only estimates. Probably only one or three security services actually have the resources to come up with the estimates, and most won't make those estimates public. So while you are trying to justify your numbers with a claim that numerous sources back them up, your claim is false - they are just all echoing the one source capable of making the estimates.

The CIA are prone to exageration, because it serves a purpose of unnerving the US public and politicians and making it easier to get approval for large defence expenditure. This CIA exageration was quite prevalent during the cold war. The Russians also exagerated their numbers as it also served their purposes to appear like a more serious threat and therefor be taken more seriosly.

Did you know that during the cold war, the official population of Russia was supposedly 225 million, and that Moscow was a city of 5 million? The science fiction author Robert Heinlein actually went on a holiday with his fluent Russian speaking wife to the USSR in 1960 and did some private investigating to try and confirm the nubers and came to the conclusion that Moscow probably only had a population of about 600,000 and that the population was probably a lot less than claimed. He was right.

"but Soviet military manning and procurement was never as robust as the CIA estimated. The CIA depiction of a Soviet military Goliath with global reach and even control of international terrorism bolstered Reagan’s portrayal of an “evil empire.” CIA publications regularly discussed a “relentless Soviet buildup” and a “disquieting index of Soviet intentions,” which reflected institutional bias and not reality. CIA distortions of military issues also contributed to delays in disarmament negotiation with the Soviet Union" https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/25/intelligence-and-ideology-the-exaggeration-of-the-threat/

Have you heard about the very serious issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

The CIA factbook probably should be taken with several pinches of salt.

Oh, and this tells you a lot about Russian military might:

"Vladimir Putin offers one million rubles to Russian mothers with 10 children as the country battles a demographic crisis

President Vladimir Putin is offering a one-off payment to Russian mothers who have given birth to 10 or more children as a way to address the country's demographic crisis. - August 19, 2022" https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/vladimir-putin-offers-one-million-rubles-to-russian-mothers-with-10-children-as-the-country-battles-a-demographic-crisis/news-story/062f502d80957b7d913a1ecd06df6d32

The main issue with Russia declaring a war is that the current "special military operation" is actually a bullshit term. It's already a full-blown war. Russia declaring war would indeed allow them to mobilise reserves, and go to war production, but there isn't exactly anything stopping them from doing all that at any point right now.

If their production goes to "war mode", then sure, they'll have new tanks, guns and ammo, but not any time soon. The same with mobilisation, it takes a long time call troops, equip them, and train them to a basic level, and then move them to the war zone. None of this is going to happen this year, even if they started right now.

Then there's the matter of sanctions - I'm sure they can get some parts needed for production, but it's not simple.

It's true Russia didn't have enough troops to start a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yet they did. That's why it hasn't gone great for them. Maybe they can gather up more strength, and re-launch their offensive, but who thinks they'll do better next time?

Must have been transporting ammo

Stop with the nonsense, Putin wanted all of Ukraine but got stopped.

Now he has a somewhat larger chunk than he had last Christmas but is getting pummeled all along the front line and will most likely lose a chunk of what he controls now by the end of the year.

So Kiev and Odessa were never targets ?