Hundreds of messages have been flooding in since the return of our feature in which Sky News correspondents and military analysts and correspondents answer your questions.
This one from reader D.webb has been put to our military analyst Sean Bell.
Does Russia even have the troops to cause NATO any harm? They have lost vast numbers in Putin’s silly war against Ukraine.
Bell says…
Thank you for your question.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was primarily concerned with the risk to Europe and Russia’s wider ambitions. If Russia had swept through Ukraine, where next?
When heroic Ukrainian defence halted Russia’s progress, the West ramped up military support to Ukraine to ensure that Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine did not escalate to a wider European conflict.
Despite Russia having access to a significantly larger pool of military resources – personnel, equipment and ammunition – Ukraine (supported by Western weapons) has successfully pushed Russia back from around 50% of the territory previously occupied.
However, despite providing Ukraine with the weapons, ammunition, training and financial support, Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring offensive this summer has not delivered the battlefield success anticipated.
President Zelenskyy still aspires to remove Russian forces from all occupied territory, but Western concerns about Russia’s wider European ambitions have abated.
Russia has lost over 2,000 main battle tanks, has suffered over 300,000 casualties, and its military forces have been significantly denuded throughout the nearly two years of conflict.
Although Russia could rebuild its army manpower in relatively short order, the defence industrial base will take years – probably decades – to generate the tanks, aircraft, missiles and ammunition required to undertake another major military campaign.
As a result, Russia is no longer the threat that it once posed to Europe and NATO.
However, Russia will have learned significant lessons from its poor battlefield performance against an adversary that – on paper at least – it should have swept aside with relative ease.
That experience could prove invaluable, and Russia will rebuild with modern weapons, equipment, and with revised infrastructure and doctrine.
In due course, that could make Russia a more capable adversary than it was at the start of the Ukraine conflict, which will be a concern for Western military planners.
So, in the near-term – and notwithstanding its nuclear arsenal – you are right to suggest that Russia now lacks the military capability to pose a significant threat to NATO.
However, that is a transient situation, and the West would be wise to ensure that it does not write off Russia’s ability to re-arm and regenerate, particularly if Russia’s core expansionist ambitions endure.
