Russia is not poorly armed. They are one of the best armed countries in the world.They have a tremendous number of artillery guns and tanks. This T-90 is actually a really good tank. It has a 125mm smoothbore gun that is stabilized, on two axes.
It can fire all the most advanced ammunition out there that NATO tanks can fire. It can even fire ATGM missiles through the barrel (AT-11 Sniper) and even can use laser guidance to guide the missile into the target. I mean that’s nothing to sneeze at.
And the Su-35? It is an impressive airplane. It’s fast, has a great range, and some versions have thrust vectoring engines for hyper maneuverability. In WVR, this aircraft is seriously deadly.
Their issues are more in tactics and strategy than in weapons. Ukraine had already offered to give hero medals to some of the Russian generals for their assistance (posthumously of course)
Their recon (of Russian military) was done very poorly. They either were not expecting to meet resistance or expected the resistance to give up upon seeing the Russian flag. Despite destroying much of Ukrainian air defense, they were unable to obtain complete control of air. And thus could not use main tactic of their doctrine of just bombing everything away.
Russia wasted their elite units in heroic air assaults where those were landed by helicopters deep behind Ukrainian lines and were wiped out having no support. They expected to take over Ukraine in a few days. So they did not prepare a logistics train.
Since tanks can go only 400–500 km without maintenance, their resource ran out by the time they got where they wanted to. Not even talking about fuel.They attacked at the start of spring; when the snow melts and there is slush all around.
Thus they were limited to advancing in columns over roads. Which made them easier to pick off.They still place major importance on big stand offs with heavy equipment. This exacerbated two previous problems and Ukrainian mobile defense baffled them.
They advanced using radio suppressing equipment. Which made their forces unable to use navigation or to communicate effectively which prevented good coordination and resulted in many of their forces getting lost.
