Before the invasion of Ukraine, Putin had been warning that he felt NATO expansion was going too far. Tankies are now saying that the "West" didn't head his warnings but by invading Ukraine he took everyone by surprise when he put his foot down and stood up to NATO and now the US will have to take Russian demands more seriously.However, on the other side of the coin, people were saying that if Russia invaded, Ukraine would be quickly crushed. Analysts predicted that Kharkiv would fall within a day and Kiev would fall within 3 days and once the country had been overrun, there would be an insurrection and Russia would wind up in a "quagmire" similar to the Soviet-Afghan war. A month into the war, Russia has only take one major population center and surrounded another. Furthermore, the super advanced fighters and SAM systems like the Su-35 and S-400 that all the tankies were creaming their pants over haven't been able to secure Russian air supremacy when fighting an opponent using soviet tech from the 1980s. As for comparisons with the Soviet-Afghan war, at this point Russia has lost more soldiers in Ukraine than they lost in the entire war in Afghanistan so they didn't get stuck in a quagmire, they threw themselves into the meat grinder. While on paper, the Russian military may seem one that could pose a serious threat to the US, it's performance in Ukraine illustrated that the cogs of the Russian war machine have become gonked up with corruption and mismanagement.
So what will play a bigger role in how much of a threat NATO sees Russia: their political willingness or their military capacity?
So what will play a bigger role in how much of a threat NATO sees Russia: their political willingness or their military capacity?
