n Abandoned damaged Russian tank in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Ukraine on April 13, 2022.Leon Klein/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Russian defense spending has grown significantly in the UK over the years called.
But the invasion of Ukraine has made the Russian military “considerably weaker,” it said.
Russia’s military is inadequate in Ukraine, with reports describing low morale and casualties among elite troops.
The invasion of Ukraine has left Russia’s military “significantly weaker” even as Britain’s defense budget has doubled in the last 20 years called Tuesday.
“Russia’s military has been significantly weakened, both materially and conceptually, by the invasion of Ukraine,” tweeted the British Ministry of Defense in its daily intelligence report on the Russian invasion.
“The recovery from this will be made worse by sanctions. This will have a profound impact on Russia’s ability to use conventional military force,” it said.
The ministry added that while Russia’s defense budget doubled from 2005 to 2018 – with large investments in air, land and sea capabilities – its new equipment didn’t help it “dominate Ukraine”.
In 2008, Russia’s then-Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced a major structural overhaul of the country’s armed forces, calling it the process of a new-look military modernization.
The reorganization came after Russia’s week-long war with Georgia that same year showed its military still lacked operational capacity, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, multiple reports have described how Russian forces have still come up short in the face of steadfast Ukrainian resistance.
The head of Ukraine’s intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, told Ukraine’s The New Voice of Ukraine news agency on Monday: “All they spent money on was to show the greatness of the Russian army in the world. Now we’ve seen that there is no greatness at all.”
The story goes on
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry also said last month that Russia had failed to recruit new troops because potential conscripts were too afraid of dying in combat.
Budanov, the intelligence chief, suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin could officially declare war on May 9 in preparation for mass mobilization.
Putin is under pressure to demonstrate that he can boast a victory by May 9, a Russian holiday commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and usually celebrated with a military parade in front of the Kremlin.
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