The sheer size of Russia, both in terms of population and territory, serves as a kind of anesthetic, numbing policymakers into believing the countries scale will inevitably produce a grinding victory. President Trump in March stated, “We should be dealing with Russia. They have the largest piece of land by far, bigger than China… You can fly through eleven time zones from one side to the other.” Historical memory reinforces this view. Despite massive losses, the Soviet Union eventually ground down the Nazi war machine on the eastern front and reached Berlin. Won’t Russia’s mass eventually allow it to carve a pathway to Kyiv built on corpses?
Russia did indeed suffer significant casualties in WWII, but Soviet casualty numbers encompass losses from nations subsumed by the USSR, including nations like Ukraine, which lost a larger percentage of its population in the war than did Russia. It is also rarely mentioned in Moscow that the Soviet Army fought and advanced in large part in American planes (14,000 of them) tanks (13,000) and trucks (400,000).
Fast forward to today and the Kremlin continues to rely upon men from its impoverished hinterlands, where ethnic Russians are scarce, as well as on North Korean forces and mercenaries from Africa or Cuba. Russia is also highly dependent upon outside suppliers to continue its campaign of aggression against Ukraine. It could not continue the war without the material support of China but also Iran and North Korea.
Size does not necessarily equate with strength; Russia faces serious vulnerabilities that western governments can and should exploit – from key transit points and military units to the effects of sinking oil prices and its inability to rescue tottering allies. Shattering the myth of Russia’s inevitable subjugation of Ukraine may give western governments greater confidence to act.