[Bruce Campbells Chin]

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows about the Russian military. Their top-down system requires them to chew through very large numbers of troops, over a long period of time, to create a force with sufficient professionalism to compete with competent adversaries. It's basically trial and error, which is too expensive for their economy to support. So, offensive success requires overwhelming force.

They are going to be more competent defensively simply because lower quality troops generally can do a better job with simple defensive tasks than offensive tasks. But that means a long war of attrition without hope of any real victory, and that is demoralizing as hell when you're not defending your own country.

This whole colossally stupid error by Putin is what happens when everyone around you is scared to tell you unpleasant truths.

[Wonder Warthog]

"This whole colossally stupid error by Putin is what happens when everyone around you is scared to tell you unpleasant truths."

Xi is in precisely the same leaky boat...he just hasn't invaded Taiwan yet. According to all the analyses I have read, though, Russia's failure to perform and the surprisingly united economic sanctions imposed by the rest of the world seem to be causing him to have second thoughts on that...