Originally Posted by
Rockie_Rapier
A cracking interview. 30 mins but worth watching through if only to watch a prize BS merchant in action.
If you leave the BS aside you can at least see quite well where they miscalculated and how badly they miscalculated. And now they have zero clue how to get out of this mess with the head up high.
They totally underestimated the 'West'. And we are a not totally unguilty for this. The general image we left as a whole was obsiously to heterogeneous, pondering, split, selfish, undecisive. Now, Russia has found out that when it counts the 'West' can act quite united. And if they count 1 + 1 they would find that the capability gap is orders of magnitudes bigger than they probably expected in their worst nightmares. They are worried over 150 Leopards + Abrams. The 'West' has >5000 of those. 30 HIMARS (w/o ATACMS) +20 CAESARs + 15 PzH2000 + a few more modern howitzers cause Havoc with them. The 'West' has hundreds of each of those. And this covers only the 'weak spot' of the 'West', i.e. its land forces. The real strength of the 'West' is its Air Force. With totally overwhelming disparity: 1000+ Top Gen 5 Fighters vs. 5- 10 dubious ones. 1400 Gen4.5 Fighters vs. 220 (+ 150 Gen4.5 Bombers). + >3000 Gen 4 Fighters vs 200 + 270 Gen 4 Bombers. And this is not even considering real world capability.
They are up sh*t creek without a paddle and they know it. That's why also this guy was keeping the implicit nuclear threat up. It's their last straw.