**The conflict has laid bare the limits of Russia’s military prowess, even if its economy is holding up better than expected.**
Six months into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has upended fundamental assumptions about Russia’s military and economy.
When the US warned of impending war earlier this year, officials and analysts in Washington and Europe alike assumed Russia’s much larger and better equipped military would quickly dominate Ukraine’s forces. They also believed Putin would find himself constrained by a weak domestic economy.
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley even warned Congress that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of an invasion being launched. President Joe Biden said he would turn the ruble to “rubble.” In the Kremlin, meanwhile, Putin and his closest advisers saw Ukraine as a nation divided with incompetent leaders that would lack the will to fight.
Yet those expectations have proved drastically wrong.
What this eventually will mean as Ukraine marks a half year of war and continued independence is as uncertain as the conflict’s outcome. What’s clear is that rather than reassert Moscow as a global military power as Putin hoped, his decision to invade Ukraine has launched a profound rethink of Russia’s conventional capabilities. It also prompted further expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with hitherto neutral Finland and Sweden resolving to join the military alliance.
Russia “is not a peer military to the US” or even smaller NATO forces, said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The war showed it “is not able to run complex operations in the way the British or French or Israelis can do, so in those terms it isn’t even a second tier military power.”
Ukraine has suffered extensive damage to infrastructure, towns and cities and heavy military casualties, while the conflict has forced millions to flee the country. Its economy is struggling.
Still, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has emerged as a defiant wartime leader able to rally his nation to inflict huge losses on Russia’s military, which was forced to retreat from around the capital, Kyiv, and regroup in the east.
“On February 24, we were told: You have no chance. On August 24, we say: Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!” Zelenskiy said Wednesday in an address to the nation marking the 31st anniversary of its independence from the former Soviet Union. “What is the end of the war for us? We used to say: Peace. Now we say: Victory.”
Ukraine remains supported by supplies of advanced US and European weapons, even as it is yet to show it can mount a successful large-scale counteroffensive and its allies find themselves under growing economic pressure.
When has Russia ever been considered a superpower post USSR?
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**The conflict has laid bare the limits of Russia’s military prowess, even if its economy is holding up better than expected.**
Six months into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has upended fundamental assumptions about Russia’s military and economy.
When the US warned of impending war earlier this year, officials and analysts in Washington and Europe alike assumed Russia’s much larger and better equipped military would quickly dominate Ukraine’s forces. They also believed Putin would find himself constrained by a weak domestic economy.
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley even warned Congress that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of an invasion being launched. President Joe Biden said he would turn the ruble to “rubble.” In the Kremlin, meanwhile, Putin and his closest advisers saw Ukraine as a nation divided with incompetent leaders that would lack the will to fight.
Yet those expectations have proved drastically wrong.
What this eventually will mean as Ukraine marks a half year of war and continued independence is as uncertain as the conflict’s outcome. What’s clear is that rather than reassert Moscow as a global military power as Putin hoped, his decision to invade Ukraine has launched a profound rethink of Russia’s conventional capabilities. It also prompted further expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with hitherto neutral Finland and Sweden resolving to join the military alliance.
Russia “is not a peer military to the US” or even smaller NATO forces, said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The war showed it “is not able to run complex operations in the way the British or French or Israelis can do, so in those terms it isn’t even a second tier military power.”
Ukraine has suffered extensive damage to infrastructure, towns and cities and heavy military casualties, while the conflict has forced millions to flee the country. Its economy is struggling.
Still, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has emerged as a defiant wartime leader able to rally his nation to inflict huge losses on Russia’s military, which was forced to retreat from around the capital, Kyiv, and regroup in the east.
“On February 24, we were told: You have no chance. On August 24, we say: Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!” Zelenskiy said Wednesday in an address to the nation marking the 31st anniversary of its independence from the former Soviet Union. “What is the end of the war for us? We used to say: Peace. Now we say: Victory.”
Ukraine remains supported by supplies of advanced US and European weapons, even as it is yet to show it can mount a successful large-scale counteroffensive and its allies find themselves under growing economic pressure.
When has Russia ever been considered a superpower post USSR?