They dont? Everyone assumed they did but given their performance in the last 2 weeks I'd say it was overblown. The reason everyone thought they were a great mi

They dont? Everyone assumed they did but given their performance in the last 2 weeks I'd say it was overblown. The reason everyone thought they were a great military power is because the Soviets were presumably a great military power with a large army and a lot of hardware. Tanks, aircraft, artillery etc etc. And when it all fell apart the Russians inherited the lion's share. Russia has lower costs in terms of personnel, lower wages and the like will somewhat lower the overhead of their military. But I think everyone overestimated how much that would help. See, raw materials costs the same around the world more or less. Titanium costs the same in Russia as it does in the US. Same for steel or any other resource that is on the global market. So Russia can only build a tank so much cheaper than Europe or the US can, but there is a floor to that price. On top of that they have been under sanctions for years for a lot of important things they can't make domestically like advanced semiconductors. Then there is the fact Russia is a well known kleptocracy. They may very well have nominally lower personnel costs but that's likely balanced by much higher corruption. And when you think of the sheer size of their military, all of those nuclear subs. All of those ICBMs, there are a lot of expensive things there that will easily take up large chunks of their budget. I think much of the conventional side of the Russian military was left to rot and much of what we were shown pre-invasion was just that, a show. T14 functionally does not exist. Same with Su-57. They are cool show pieces but the real military are using 30+ year old hardware that has been piecemeal upgraded and not well maintained.