Yes, our armed forces have been run down since 1991 as a 'peace' dividend where Russia's was meant to have come all democratic and cuddly, except it hasn't worked out like that!
At least, at 2.4% of GDP we are still one of five countries spending over the NATO requirement of 2%. However, Putin's aggression and the violation of the Helsinki Accords means that the UK and the rest of Europe are going to have to do a strategic review and spend more money.
Probably, the worst major economy for underspending is Germany at 1.3% of GDP and due to a shortage of small arms, in a recent exercise some of their troops and armoured vehicles use black painted broomsticks to simulate guns, I kid you not.
The problem with this over cutting of defence budgets, is the numbers game of tanks, aircraft in 'operational service' is actually much lower than the quoted figures, due to mothballing and cannibalization to keep others running within budgets.
The Ukrainian army has been poor, the senior officers abysmal, with some caught working for Russia, but the Russian army has been little better apart from a few elite forces. Russia is using Ukraine as a proving ground for much of their latest equipment and the Ukrainian army with their 20 year old anti-tank weapons are generally damaging tanks rather than breaching the armour. Something that modern western anti-tank weapons don't have a problem doing. Even so, the war in East Ukraine has been more costly to Russia in terms of casualties already than Afghanistan with over 5,000 killed. There are over 4,000 new graves in Rostov in Chechnya and numerous small graveyards in Ukraine full of Russian mercenaries and troops along with 7 Russian mobile crematorium that can incinerate up to 56 bodies per day, but they haven't been able keep up.
If we continue to appease Putin we will find out sooner rather than later on how good our forces are against the Russians as Putin will overstep the mark or create a worse MH17, where we will have no choice but to react. The general consensus that this will probably happen in the Baltics, but could also very easily happy in the Balkans.
Putler has relied of a growing economy to keep the Moscow elite happening, while he was busy stealing an alleged $200bn, but with a faltering economy, he needs new distractions for the sheeple and nationalism, creating artificials enemies and wars does the job nicely.
With the very poor Western response to Ukraine, there is plenty of scope for this to turn into a more general war, which the West may get entangled in.
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Topic: Russian Bears (Read 4191 times)