Russia, the Phantom Threat. By StrategyPage.

Europeans continue to worry about how they will handle the Russian threat. It seems odd that 700 Europeans should be asking 327 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians.

So far Russia has lost 1.2 million troops in Ukraine and is running out of Russians willing to fight the Ukrainians. Currently Russia is obtaining North Koreas and Cuban troops, plus thousands of foreign military-age men in Russia, to maintain a credible force in Ukraine.

Russian forces are not attacking as much as they used to because those attacks are usually pointless against better trained and armed Ukrainians who use lots of drones and defensive tactics optimized to kill or wound as many Russian attackers as possible. Russia is having a hard time maintaining a force in Ukraine that can adequately man the thousand kilometer front line. Russia is no longer a ground threat in Ukraine, but an uninvited guest seeking a reasonable excuse to leave. …

And Ukraine:

The Ukraine has always been an unwilling part of the Russian empire and rebelled many times before regaining their independence once more in 1991. There were still elderly Russians who remembered the campaign in the Ukraine from 1945 into the 1950s against Ukrainian rebels. The Ukrainians have not forgotten this and promised more of it if Russian troops returned. Even in Ukraine the Russian speaking portion of the population was largely in favor of remaining a part of Ukraine. Same deal in eastern Ukraine which the Soviets sought to Russify with lots of migrants from Russia. Those migrants may still speak Russian but most think of themselves as Ukrainian. Thus, Ukraine was no place for a paper tiger.