The Russian military is currently at the highest level of combat capability since the Cold War. This is the conclusion reached by the authors of Russia's Military Modernization: An Assessment, available on the website of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
It says that over a decade of investment and reform, Russian troops have become more professional and better equipped technically than their predecessors. “Today, the Russian armed forces have become an effective military tool, and Moscow has demonstrated a willingness to use it or the threat of its use,” the authors say.
According to them, Russia began modernizing the army after its armed forces showed low efficiency in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict in 2008. Researchers noted special advances in modernizing nuclear capabilities and aerospace forces, as well as weaker and uneven progress in the combat readiness of the ground forces and the renewal of the naval fleet.
At the beginning of 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said that Russia manages to maintain a high level of combat capability despite the fact that the country's military budget is several times less than, for example, the United States and NATO. According to him, Moscow is in sixth place in the world in terms of the absolute amount of funds spent on weapons. In 2018, the country's military spending amounted to $ 61.4 billion.
