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The Russian Army Proved to be No Match for Ukrainian Ingenuity
By now, there has been plenty of commentary about Ukraine’s David-like defense against the much larger Russian Goliath. On paper at least, the Russian military should have taken Kyiv and overrun Ukraine within days of the initial invasion.
At least, that’s what everyone expected.
Even the ponderous U.S. intelligence community, with its $66 billion budget for FY 2022, got it dead wrong.
So, the question is “why?”
Certainly, we learned that the mighty Russian war machine is a caricature of its former self — the formidable Red Army of yesteryear that kept NATO commanders up at night during the Cold War.
But when asking ‘why’ Ukraine is doing so well, there are two factors that everyone seems to miss: Ukraine’s battlefield ingenuity and Russia’s inability to learn from its mistakes.
Ukrainian ingenuity
Ukraine’s willingness to adapt, improvise, and combine both high-tech and low-tech equipment to support a cohesive strategy gives them a sort of nimbleness when compared to the lumbering Russian military.
It’s far from a perfect analogy, but it’s like the stereotypical giant who can absorb a lot of damage, but whose size makes him slow — who is struggling against a…