FoxxyBrown1111 said:
You dont know the russian soul. They are bitter fighters until the end.
when i first read this, i thought of the several counter cases from my memory/lessons in the military history. based on that memory/record, i basically disagree with the notion of the russian fighter being a consistently fearsome warier 'until the end'...explaining:
their long military record shows, that they fought awesomely in the wars that originated as 'defensive wars' on their own land or in their own neighborhood. not so, at least not so consistently, when their soldiers were sent abroad to fight for some goals less noble than 'defending the homeland'.
and even on their own turf, the russians were losing to both the napoleon and the nazi invaders until their enemies got sucked in by the endless space and hostile climate. needless to recall, the hundreds of thousands of russian pow's etc in both ww1 and ww2...
also, they lost some wars due to their inferior economy/technology (the crimean war to the english and french) or due to inferior leadership (in 1905 to japan).
one thing that we can see consistently in the russian military history is that they are awesome fighter,
perhaps superior to their european counterparts historically speaking, when lead and equipped well.
the zhukov, suvorov and their others outstanding generals battles have shown that the stoic nature of their soldiers, their ability to fight on after taking the absolutely horrendous losses (the losses that would stop ANY western general), and above all, their adaptability and learning - make a russian on his own turf a very,very tough adversary.
nato ignoring the objective record would certainly cause a major military confrontation in europe if they challenged the russian military in their own neighborhood.