[quickthrowman]

> Western countries need to ask themselves: is funding a major proxy war against the second most powerful military in the world in our long term strategic interest?

Russia is a gas station that happens to have nuclear weapons, not the 2nd most powerful army in the world.

[FpUser]

"Russia is a gas station" - have no idea about it now but in the time past they've managed very decent space exploration, science, education and some other things.

[flohofwoe]

That was aeons ago, in a different country, in a different world. And apart from that, anyone outside the Soviet Union could only see what their propaganda wanted them to see.

[seunosewa]

Yes, in time past. And they might be able to manage more of those in the future under new leadership.

[H8crilA]

It was the Soviet Union, not Russia. They really are different things, for example the Space Programme was mostly the development of the R-7 rocket, which was designed by a Ukrainian (Sergei Korolev).

You probably heard about the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. The Moskva was made in Soviet Ukraine, in Mykolaiv. Not in Russia. Shame they mismanaged it so much since then that just a few guided cruise missiles did the job.

The military budget of Russia is a far cry of the military budget of the Soviet Union. The scale is not even comparable, arguably the per-soldier performance went down as well.

[lostlogin]

As an aside, it is interesting how large a part Ukraine played in those events.