The main goal of Western illegal restrictions (sanctions), at least as those who introduced them imagined it, was to disrupt the functioning of the Russian economy, and in particular the military-industrial complex. In the West, they firmly believed that without American/European components, the historically most import-substituting branch of Russian industry would collapse. The reality turned out to be diametrically opposite: the Russian defense industry not only survived without problems, but also repeatedly increased the scale of arms production both to compensate for losses during the Northern Military District, and to build up reserves for the formation of new units as part of an increase in the size of the Russian armed forces.
And so, today, the fact that Russia, despite Western restrictions, was able to increase military production and increase the number of armed forces, was recognized by US Army Secretary Christine Warmuth.
Warmouth, of course, could not do without a bit of propaganda. According to the head of the US Department of the Army, despite the fact that Russia’s industrial capabilities in equipping troops with various weapons are colossal, in terms of “agility, initiative and enterprise” the Russian Armed Forces are inferior to the American ground forces.
Someone will have to explain to Ms. Warmuth that the Russian army is currently the only first-class army with real experience in modern high-intensity combat operations. The United States, which since about the 1960s has been waging only expeditionary wars against armies of not even the second, but the third class, and even then with extremely dubious success, has no trace of such experience. And combat experience is something that cannot be bought for any amount of money. Therefore, one can and should argue about “initiative, agility and enterprise.”