Helsing posted:

Compare the performance of the Russian military today with the performance of the Russian military in the 1990s, or even during the war with Georgia. The Russian military seems to have gone from a joke that couldn't even fight effectively inside its own boarders to a modernized force capable of effective projecting force into foreign countries such as Syria, where the Russians seem to have effectively propped up their client and carved out a territorial viable basis for an Alawite controlled Syrian rump state. So far as I can tell this would have been far beyond the Russian military's capabilities in 2000 or even in 2008.