Ukraine, though, was a genuinely rash act. Russia began the war with what seemed to be a massive advantage by any imaginable measure — from gross domestic product (GDP) to numbers of warplanes, tanks, artillery, warships, and missiles. Little wonder, perhaps, that Putin assumed his troops would take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, within weeks, at most. And he wasn’t alone. Western military experts were convinced that his army would make quick work of its Ukrainian counterpart, even if the latter’s military had, since 2015, been trained and armed by the United States, Britain, and Canada.
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