I don't think the west overestimated the Russian war machine. The use-case for focusing on their few and somewhat modern capabilities in the past lies in the "

I don't think the west overestimated the Russian war machine. The use-case for focusing on their few and somewhat modern capabilities in the past lies in the "then" future, not in the "then" present If Russia was smarter, they would have trained their military and upgraded their Soviet era equipment. Which is something they didn't do. They could have become formidable, but it's mostly about the quantity now. They don't have quality. The resistance of Ukraine has partially been successful because of their own learning over the 8 years, the apparently CIA training ( which came out pretty soon) and the delivery of western defensive equipment. Why we talked about the Russian army is simple: It could have become dangerous quickly if they had enough money. We need a reason to spend 1-2% in military of our GDP. Without actual military threat, democracy wouldn't accept so much investments in military easily. Additionally, Russia wanted to present to the outside as a global military might. Which the west gladly accepted the appearance of and Russia used it to sell weapons abroad ( china/India).