Speaking at an arms show near Moscow on Monday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced: “We are ready to offer allies and partners the most modern types of weapons – from small arms to armoured vehicles and artillery, combat aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles,” adding that Russian weapons were valued for their “reliability, quality” and said “almost all of them have been used in real combat operations more than once”.
The aftermath of Russia’s February 24th invasion of Ukraine paints a different picture however as the Russian military has been decimated by the smaller Ukrainian forces with their state of the art Western weapons, which have inflicted heavy losses.
The reality is that even the most modern Russian military equipment is 1-2 generations behind the NATO standard ordnance being used by Ukrainian forces.
Likewise Russian tactics, as Ukraine’s forces – having benefited from extensive training from British, Canadian, and U.S. special forces since 2014 – have outwitted and out-fought Russia’s conscript level military at every twist and turn.
Although present at the Moscow arms show, India, which has relied heavily on Russia for arms, is known to be unimpressed by the performance of Russian equipment on the battlefield. Russia’s tanks have proven particularly vulnerable to modern Western missiles due to their outdated design.
Even the T-90, Russia’s much vaunted third generation Main Battle Tank has proven easy prey for Western missiles in the hands of recently trained Ukrainian troops: in July, Egypt bought 500 T-90s, India has purchased more than 450 and Algeria has also bought T-90s.
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