Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country, Part II

[hazard]

I love the irony that Russia will be trying to fight in Russia in the winter...  That's like, the number one military mistake according to a Sicilian I once knew.  And they're going to do it underequipped.  Didn't they ever learn anything from their enemies?

This is your reminder that, during the Winter War, Russia send thousands of conscripts to fight a war in the freezing cold of the Finnish forests, with the bulk of the forces drawn from the southern territories of the Soviet Union. Their army was well equipped relative to the Fins, had air support, a large number of tanks, and nowhere near enough training to fight that war, nor a commander capable of executing that war. They only won because Finland lacked the population and material support needed to not get buried under the mountain of Soviet dead.

It's not that they never learn anything from their enemies. It's that they forget what they learned from their own failures.

And Ukraine may have a substantially smaller population than Russia, but it's not nearly as outmatched as Finland was, nor is it lacking in material support from other nations to make up for having recruited nearly a million souls into its army and the economic repercussions thereof and the war in general.