Admittedly, Russia/Soviet Union has some historically significant victories.
These include against Napoleon ...
... and against Nazi Germany (particularly at the Battle of Stalingrad).
But Russia's losses are quite notable. They include the Crimean War...
...the Russo-Japanese War...
...and World War I.
And even the notable victories have to been taken with a HUGE grain of salt regarding Russian military prowess.
Napoleon's "Grande Armee" wasn't all that "grand" by the time it actually reached Russia. That's really the lesson to draw from Minard's famous graph of Napoleon's march: by the time the army reach Smolensk it as down to 145k from 420k.
And you were more likely to see a horse in the German "War Machine" that invaded in 1941...
Using data on battlefield losses during "inter-state wars", this graph shows the percentage of wars in which the listed country had the most battlefield deaths of all the participants. The take away should be clear.
The Russian military essentially uses an "attrition model": keep take losses until the other side quits, is destroyed, or, if the fighting goes long enough, Russia itself decides to stop fighting.
Unfortunately, if the plan is to wait for Russia to stop fighting, then you could be waiting a long time.
And if your military doctrine is based on an attrition model, then you can get away with coup-proofing the military (e.g. removing highly competent officers from positions of power). See @ProfTalmadge's book.
In short, how Russia's forces are performing in Ukraine is consistent with Russia's historical strategy in war fighting: take heavily losses and hope the other side quits.
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