This is one of the oldest and most persistent Russian propaganda lies. There are even some active high-ranking NATO officers promoting it:

“Russia is much stronger than the West believes; they are only using a small part of their forces in Ukraine, and if they wanted to, they could overrun the place in no time.”

Ergo, so the “argument” goes, all resistance against Russia is just a hopeless waste of Western resources.

Of course, this is all bullshit. Everyone who goes to the warzones in Ukraine and sees the enormous amounts of destroyed Russian military equipment can attest to it.

A Russian airborne combat vehicle that was destroyed during the battle of Bucha. (Picture by the author of this post)

What surprised me a bit is that almost all of the tanks and armored vehicles the Russians lost on the battlefield are of very recent production.

I’m quite knowledgeable about the Russian military arsenal, but sometimes I still have to google to identify a rusting wreck I just came across, as the Russians are often using their newest weapons.

The Russians are definitely sending the best they have. Of course, they still have some reserves, but these units are situated in assembly areas not too far from the battlefield and will sooner or later join the fight.

There isn’t a large number of well-trained and well-equipped units somewhere in Russia while the Russian military is hemorrhaging in Ukraine.

It’s all rubbish.

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That’s what a Russian trench looks like after an attack by a Ukrainian drone. Russia is sending poorly equipped, barely trained recruits, who sign contracts hoping “to earn big money” (USD $2,000 per month) by safeguarding some warehouses in the rear — instead, the poverty-stricken Russians are thrown into the meat grinder of frontal assaults.

Putin’s generals wasted the best Russian troops within the first weeks of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when they hoped to take over the whole country within 4–6 weeks (Kyiv was supposed to fall in 3 days).

Now, 2.5 years into the full-scale war, the stockpiles of the Russian weapons and machinery are exhausted, and the military-industrial complex is working in full operational capacity, making bombs and tanks 24/7.

Yet, it’s not enough to replenish the massive daily losses due to Ukrainian attacks with the use of cheap drones and precise western missiles and guided bombs.

Russians are now sending to the front their ancient T-54 tanks, which are 70 years old.

(Video in the comments below.)

In modern warfare, drones destroy everything and everyone. Russia has already lost in Ukraine more than 100 of its newest T-90M tanks, and these ancient T-54s will become iron coffins for the crews.

Already in the 1st year of the war — after the first catastrophic losses of equipment — the Russian Ministry of Defense began sending T-62s from storages to the front, saying that these tanks “would be used as stationary firing points” (i.e. as artillery), but we all have seen these tanks sent into attacks on Ukrainian positions — and burning in the fields, destroyed by the Ukrainian defenders.

Now Russia is sending T-54s. At the front, technicians will put metal nets over them (trying to protect the tank from drones dropping explosives — works poorly), put kamikaze crews inside — and send them to take the next forest belt, after which there will be another forest belt, and another one — endlessly.

Not many survive the 1st attack, even fewer survive the second. Russia is trying to maintain pressure on the front, throwing more and more disposable soldiers and weaponry into the grinder.

In this war, huge numbers of Russians are dying. The Kremlin gang first robbed them, stripped them bare, plunged them into poverty, and now these poor fellows, in hopes to get out of debts by earning “big money”, sell their souls and bodies: they sign army contracts and go to kill Ukrainians — and then return home in zinc coffins.

Kremlin is committing genocide not only against Ukrainians, but also against its own people.

There will be time when this period of the Russian history will be reassessed in Russia — and no doubt, that’s how this Putin’s war will be viewed.