Vladimir Putin’s recent threats to invade Ukraine could prove a costly mistake for the Kremlin leader. Military analysts have long-noted Russia’s inferiority in terms of conventional military forces. In an interview with Deutsche-Welle, Russian military analyst Aleksandr Golts mentioned that the US has an “overwhelming” advantage over Russia in terms of both their Navy and Air Force. The Ukrainian military has 255,000 soldiers, with over 900,000 reservists available. Russia has a total of over 3 million soldiers, but those soldiers are distributed across a massive country, and their roles include guarding the Kremlin from an increasingly restless populace, including many Russians who are angry over the Kremlin’s treatment of protest leader Aleksandr Navalny. TRT World also reports that the Ukrainian military “has acquired all sorts of new military technologies, weapons and of course Turkish drones but also javelin anti-tank missiles from the US. The Ukrainian army has simply gained experience on the ground, showing great valour and effectiveness on the battlefields,”

The idea of wagging the dog is also providing limited benefit for Putin. A recent article in Deutsche-Welle highlights how many Russians are “war weary”, and have no interest in yet another war to try to reclaim another former Russian territory. Many Russians reportedly feel that Ukraine is a “brother nation” filled with Slavic people’s just like the Russians, and Putin’s efforts at annexing the Ukraine is just unnecessary violence.

Russia is also facing growing social inequality that is leading to increasing unrest reports The Guardian. The cabal of wealthy oligarchs that surround Putin own a majority of the country’s total wealth while average working Russians live a humble lifestyle. “A recent report by Credit Suisse showed that Russia is the most unequal of all the world’s major economies. The richest 10% of Russians own 87% of all the country’s wealth, according to the report, compared with 76% in the US and 66% in China. According to another measure, by VTB Capital, 1% of the Russian population holds 46% of all the personal bank deposits in the country.”

The combination of the Ukrainian military being stronger than Putin may want to admit, support from the United States and other NATO allies, a public that is growing increasingly restless and sees war with Ukraine as unnecessary violence and an attempt to distract from economic inequality could make Putin’s aggression towards Ukraine a very costly mistake for the Kremlin.