how powerful is Russia?

Russia had a brutal history during the Second World War, with most of its earth scorched and two thirds of its industry completely destroyed, and as if this wasn't bad enough it had to live in fear from the military alliance built up from the west to counter Moscow, it was in late 1991 that the days of the Cold War came to an end, the USSR collapsed after holding together 39,000 nuclear weapons and the massive Red Army, it all came tumbling down, Mikhail Gorbachev who had now offered reform was gone and the first president of the Russian Federation was a drunk.



Russia then ended up bogged down in a long war in Chechnya devoting 70,000 soldiers as well as support equipment and lost 5,000 in the process in the long and painful struggle which saw rebels producing cheap Borz sub machine guns in their dirty war against the Russian forces, the bombing of Grozny at the start of the war continually for three weeks by the Russian Air Force killed 27,000 civilians, mostly ethnic Russians.

Yelstin had made the Russian military look weak and careless and old fashioned, as it was during the 1990's, the once proud navy was reduced to tatters and the Russian air force patrolled only its own borders, to America and the rest of the world Russia didn't seem to matter and wasn't taken half as seriously as it should have been.



However Vladamir Putin an ex KGB man became president of Russia in 2000 at the beginning of the 21st century and begun to bring to the country back onto its feet, a second war started in Chechnya and is still be fought in mere skirmishes to this day!

Putin helped the military build itself up properly and in 2007 the Tu-95 Bear was seen in the skies over the North Pole, the South Pacific and even in British air space, Russia was showing itself to be a dominant power for the first time since the Cold War.



But has it changed?

Well it wasn't half as big since the Soviet times but it hasn't changed very much equipment wise, apart from some air force technology demonstrators.

The war last August in Georgia proves my point, the Russians sent in line after line of tanks against their enemy;



That covered by artillery and fighter jet sorties did give the Georgian military a pounding but their weak air defence did manage to down a Tu-22 supersonic bomber!
The Russian tactics seems to be a large force of men and equipment to sweep through an area covered by missiles, a form of warfare much larger on the ground than British or American warfare in the last 60 years!



Russia still has more nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War than the United States, Britain, France and Israel combined, 14,000 or so mostly in storage, however after tensions arose in early 2007, and again during the 2008 war in Georgia I'm sure Russia has a hefty amount of these attached to their many ICBM's.

Putin's reform may not have indefinitely weakened Russia as Gorbachev's one helped speed the collapse of the Soviet Union, no its strengthening it and in the mere future Russia will be a strong world power and will matter!