Ukraine is a small country, much less populated than Russia and has not only held off the Russian invasion for over 3 years,
Ukraine had a stronger military compared to Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom combined.
Ukraine had a thousand tanks at the start of the war. At least half of them were modernized. The T-64BV Model 2017 has third generation thermal, new gun stabilizer, new autoloader, same fire suppression system as T-84 Oplot-M, digital communications, satellite navigation, and other improvements. They also upgraded their T-80s to T-80BV Model 2018 which brings it up to T-64BV Model 2017 standard. There is also T-64BM and T-64BM2 which are similar to the T-64BV Model 2017 but with a more modern fire control system. These tanks are not really much worst than say a Leopard 2.
Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom have less than a thousand tanks combined.
Ukraine had two thousand MT-LBs which are fairly decent APCs (Russia had 3,000). They also had hundreds of modern BTR-4s and BTR-3s supplemented by hundreds of BTR-70s and BTR-80s.
Ukraine had far more artillery guns compared to these countries combined. This includes the 500 2S3s they had at the start of the war which is Soviet counterpart to M109. They also had plenty of 2S1s and 2S19s. Even if you include only the 2S3s (which again are comparable to the M109), this is roughly the same amount of M109s that the US has.
Ukraine has almost five times the amount of multiple launch rocket systems as France, Germany, Italy, and the UK combined. They are also the largest user of HIMARS and M270 outside of the US with them having more than France and Germany combined.
Ukraine has also received over a hundred modern tanks (roughly the same amount the UK has) and over half a thousand of modern artillery guns from the West which is more artillery guns than the amount that France, German, Italy, and the UK have combined. This has helped replace their losses with their fleet of 2S3s which for example dwindled down to 140.
Ukrainian military was also being trained by NATO since 2015 and also received MILES gear.
The UK practically sent their entire stockpile of SPGs to Ukraine and begged to Sweden to replace their fleet and Poland thrown half of their stockpile of SPGs to Ukraine. Almost every European country has complained about massive shortages of ammunition due to it all being given to Ukraine. France stated they could only fight Russia for a few weeks before running out of ammo.
Ukraine literally has a stronger military than France, Germany, Italy, and the UK combined. There is a reason why these countries state a Ukrainian defeat would be the end of Europe although in my opinion Russia has no plans to invade more countries outside of maybe the Baltics.
All of this despite most of the Russian Armed Forces not even being in Ukraine, majority of forces in Ukraine again are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia.
several times they’ve actually taken Russian territory
You mean the several failed Belgorod incursions?
Or you mean when Ukraine thrown up to a quarter of all their combat troops including their most elite into a small area in Kursk Oblast which got destroyed recently? Russia has 500K soldiers in the Ground Forces not including logistics which is part of its own branch. 100K of these are conscripts and Russia will not use them even in Kursk due to public pressure. So this leaves 400K soldiers. But most of those soldiers are being used to guard the country against NATO. This left 100K on Ukraine’s border (not including the 100K in Belarus) with 50K of which fighting in Kursk. Ukraine essentially concentrated 100K of their most elite forces and captured a very small portion of Kursk before being halted by 50K troops. These 50K troops recently destroyed this force utterly. When the chance of US intervention ceased with the Putin-Trump talks, Russia immediately launched a large-scale offensive with the air being crowded with aircraft and entire Ukrainian units surrendering. They liberated 28 settlements in a single week and captured multiple western tanks and pieces of equipment.
as well as destroying Russian infrastructure inside russia and so on.
Yet the Russian economy keeps growing.
Most countries still use cold-war era equipment including Russia.
Russia however produced more T-90Ms (a very good tank mind you) last year than the amount of tanks the entire German military has. Production was 20-30 per month last year but this has likely since doubled. Losses for T-90Ms have been low as per Oryx with production massively outpacing losses (one to two months of production last year was enough to replace yearly T-90M losses).
Before you talk about T-54/55s, they are being sent to volunteer formations that use them as SPGs for hotter zones as they are better protected from artillery fire than most other SPGs (including western) which is often just armoured against bullets. In fact, they were the last Soviet tank produced to ever have indirect fire instructions in the manual.
Russian SPG losses significantly reduced since the T-54 appeared.
Regular army has priority when it comes to receiving modern equipment, unlike the Volunteer formations in Ukraine.
Yes corruption exists, but Russia has been cracking down on it.
Where is your proof of this?
Russia’s last partial mobilisation happened in 2022. Russia over the past couple of years has seen a massive surge in volunteers with around 430,000 recruited in 2024 compared to 300,000 being recruited in 2023. That seems to contradict your idea of noone else wanting to go.
Told to him by relatives? Hearsay?
Soviet and Russian troops have traditionally used portyanki and only switched to socks in 2013.
Some troops in Ukraine are complaining about being issued foot wraps despite it not only being standard issue not so long ago but dry faster than normal socks and with many wearing tarpaulin boots, foot wraps is better for them anyways.
Meanwhile, the Finnish had to knit over 20,000 pairs of socks for Ukrainian soldiers.
Video of portyanki.
Yeah, ‘little’ Ukraine. A country with a stronger military force compared to Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom combined.