Russian Prowess Questioned as Troops Bogged Down in Ukraine
- Questions over missing capabilities, from airpower to cyber
- Poor troop morale, organization echo past weaknesses
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The Russian army’s unexpected struggles in Ukraine are prompting calls for a fresh look at widely shared assumptions about the effectiveness of President Vladimir Putin’s military machine.
Putin spent well over a decade modernizing a conscript-based military that proved wanting in Chechnya during the 1990s, and Georgia in 2008. Its first test in a large-scale conflict since the end of the Cold War has raised questions about what that boom in spending achieved.