Putin's never really fought a war though, so he would be hard pressed to have won any. The conflicts Russia has engaged in during his reign have been small affa

Putin's never really fought a war though, so he would be hard pressed to have won any. The conflicts Russia has engaged in during his reign have been small affairs where there was basically never any real military resistance against Russia. Each of those conflicts was fait accompli as soon as it started. Ukraine is a different beast. Its a country with a regular army that has spent the last 8 years undergoing a rapid modernization process for said army. They have 44 million people, and lots of western support.