If you do a survey of Russian military history from the Napoleonic Wars to the present, this is what you find:
- It is quite common for the Russians to fight ineptly in the first stages of conflict;
- Their performance tends to improve over time;
- They do their best fighting on their home turf; and
- They usually rely on manpower advantages, geography, and weather to overcome technological and tactical inferiority.
The conflict that is the most analogous to the Ukraine War during this timeframe, in my opinion, was the Crimean War, which was initially an imperialist adventure against the Turks, but ended as a war primarily against France and England, the two predominant European powers, in an area that is now claimed by both Ukraine and Russia. As we know, that war didn’t end well for the Russians.
The analogy to the current war is not perfect. NATO is not sending troops to fight directly with the Russians. Nevertheless, if you’re Putin, it should worry you, because if you insist it is an existential conflict, what happens if you lose?