Their surface fleet is a pale shadow of its former self. Their submarine fleet is very good, but they cannot sustain deployments. instead they must sortie from their bases for missions and return. They can't do deterrence patrols like the US, France and the UK can.
The Russian navy is cucked and gay but that's nothing new. They've been fucking garbage since it was the Russian Empire. So its not really accurate to call them a shadow of their former selves; they were always a joke, they're just a bigger one now.
Their sub fleet is trash. Only with the latest 2 generations of subs did their boomers gain the ability to launch submerged, something US subs have been doing since the 60s (in prototypes, reliably since the 70s). Their boomers lack the ability to perform true "blue water" independent operations, lacking the endurance features of NATO subs; the Russian boomers required a surface fleet and would operate from Russian waters as basically mobile silos. Their nuke attack subs cannot maintain stealth at speed, the propellers will produce cavitation at depth and there's something fucky with the reactor design if they need to push the output, but I've forgotten what.
There was a time in the 80s through the 90s when the Kilo was a legit threat (at least on paper, the commanders seemed...less than good) but that was just on accoustics. It was D/E and making a quiet D/E is so easy the French can do it. They had excellent acoustic panelling but a) it was a maintenance nightmare and b) For the 80s. That shit is no longer top of the line and sonar is no longer fooled by it.
Anyway fire control was garbage, the original Project 877 tubes would effectively broadcast the sub's location if it did launch torpedos (this was mitigated in the Project 636 and Project 636.3 iirc) but that's only a problem if you care about the sub surviving after launching torpedos. And of course as a D/E range and crush-depth were also garbage.
But the goal wasn't a submarine that would compete with NATO or would survive longer than a single torpedo salvo, it was a comparatively cheap sub NATO would have to be constantly worried about getting in range of carriers, boomers, or troop ships should festivities pop off and NATO be near the Russian coast. And it did that for at least a decade and a half (I forget exactly when computer audio analysis was able to cope with acoustic baffling)
The Euros are delusional about Russia. in it's current state it would not be able to get past eastern Poland.
This is correct, but just because you can beat the shit out of a drunk retard doesn't mean you want to let them come in and shit on your kitchen floor, because you'll have to clean up that fat brown snake + retard blood from beating the shit out of them.
Thats why all this bullshit is maddening. Russia poses no threat past its immediate neighbors.
As they have nukes, that's just not true.
Also the KGB funds tons of disinfo campaigns.
Name one country besides the US that could even challenge Russia militarily today much less clobber it? Ukraine had the largest military in Europe.
That's because Europe is comprised of tiny postage stamp nations. Germany, one of the largest nations in Europe, is only about double the size of Wisconsin. If you combine all the armies in the EU - not all europe, not non-US NATO, just the EU - You get to something about the size of Russian army. If you look at NATO (and exclude the US) as a whole it jumps way up because of Turkey (which has a large army though that army is ....
inconsistently equipped)
Ukraine had the largest army in Europe because they were engaged in a civil war and larger than most European countries.
