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Notes -
I would like to state for the record that my impression of Russian incompetence is, as HaroldWilson kind-of touched on, driven less by Western reporting and more by evidence surfaced by internet randos (i.e. Twitter people and Channers) looking for the dankest, funniest, you-literally-could-not-make-this-shit-up-if-you-tried bits of intel that trickle out of the area.
With that out of the way, I want to reiterate that we are talking about fiction. I suppose that if I had phrased my post as "the modern Russian army has now ascended to the tier of Enemy-faction-that-is-safe-to-use for fiction creators," maybe I would not be writing this post now. I can acknowledge that the reality isn't quite as popular image makes it seem. The Nazis were genuinely more threatening than certain hero-fantasy media (e.g. Rat Patrol, Indiana Jones, Wolfenstein) makes them out to have been. Similarly, the Russians aren't a complete laughingstock and still represent an undefined, nebulous threat.
But, in the ragged parlance of our sitting President, come on, man. Again, alluding to my first paragraph, some of the reports about the reality of Russian capability in the beginning of the war and beyond* were so out there that any fiction writer who depicted them as such before the war would have been slammed and roasted by no end of YouTube rantsona channels, armchair generals, and 4Chan pedants. However, we clearly live in the Dank Timeline, and I will never not be amused by the idea of future generations using the 2022 Russians in the manner described above.
*(using insecure commercial radios instead of actual encrypted military radios; tires that fell apart from lack of maintenance, making Russian trucks incapable of necessary off-roading; a Russian plane that avoided starting WWIII only because a missile failed to launch from, again, lack of maintenance; the Cope Cage)
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