The Russian army's paradox: a threat and a disaster at once

Twelve years to reach half of Russia's military level

Twelve years. That is the conclusion a report published in El Español attributes to NATO for reaching just half of Russia's military level. The figure alone seems to make an argument: either the Russian army is a antiestéticarsome machine, or the West is in far worse shape than it admits. The problem is that, in parallel, the opposite description circulates: a 60-kilometre column of armored vehicles unable to take Kiev, with troops who, the story goes, were wearing dress uniforms to parade down the avenues.

Russia's military power according to El Español

The El Español report presents an uncomfortable scenario for those who take Russian weakness for granted. Twelve years to reach half of Russia's military level is a horizon that refutes any triumphalist reading. At the other end, the analysis of the initial failure in Ukraine describes a country that got its intelligence wrong, believed a column of junk would be enough to subdue Kiev, and piled up a string of tactical blunders. Both things cannot be true at the same time, yet they coexist in public analysis.

The contradiction that feeds the propaganda

Among the most skeptical positions, the argument is made that the story of the Russian threat is used to justify a European militarization paid for with basic social services such as healthcare and education. If Russia is at once an existential threat and an ineffective army, the simplest conclusion is that one of the two narratives is propaganda. It is not hard to find those who claim that an anti-Russian narrative has been built for five years, and that real military capability has been buried under rhetoric.

The geopolitical reading and the Iran factor

A more speculative hypothesis also appears: that the US might end up asking Russia for help in the conflict with Iran, and that, in return, the Kremlin would agree to stop once it controls the whole of Donbas, while the EU tries to acquire weapons that Ukraine would no longer receive. It is an unconfirmed scenario, but it reflects the conviction of part of the analysis that the war will not end with a final victory for either side.

The unsettling question closes the piece: if Russia were so mediocre, what does that say about Ukraine, and above all about NATO, which has failed to win the war against it? The contradiction remains unresolved. The same analysis that warns of the Russian danger describes an army that could not take Kiev. Something does not add up; that mismatch is the only consensus.