Russia is currently using Syria to test new capabilities as a laboratory to evaluate how weapons and platforms perform in actual combat conditions.

Ukraine made early strategic choice through multiple mobilization waves to create large pool of manpower with combat experience as insurance against Russian occupation, at the cost of not building financially sustainable professional military with modern technology and permanent standing force Ukraine could sustain long-term.

Russia will attempt to use indirect action strategies and asymmetric responses across multiple domains including electronic warfare, cyber attack, and disinformation designed to disrupt enemy command and control and break political will to fight in order to mitigate conventional imbalances with near-peer adversaries.

Russia may threaten or employ its nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack that threatens the very existence of the Russian state or damages or destroys Russia's nuclear deterrent, per Russian military doctrine.

Sanctions have hurt Russian defense industries in niche but important areas like electronics and related subcomponents, affecting Russia's ability to develop advanced military systems.

Russia is not building a global expeditionary force and is not establishing a global network of bases outside its region to support global power ambitions; Russia's long-term procurement plans do not support global power projection, particularly in the naval realm.

Russian military officials talk extensively about problems with scalability and C4ISR challenges in operating across the entire theater from the Arctic to the Black Sea, suggesting Russia cannot yet fully coordinate large-scale operations across geographic distance.

When asked how Russia plans to replace tactical nuclear weapons with long-range conventional precision strike, Russian officials respond that this is impossible, suggesting Russia does not believe conventional weapons can truly substitute for nuclear weapons as deterrent.

Russia has concern about force posture buildups in the Baltics and areas near Russian border because distances are very short, and if NATO bases aircraft in the Baltics, it is only minutes before they can reach mainland Russia, forcing Russia to maintain very short warning windows.

Russia believes the United States possesses a 'conventional triad' including precision strike, prompt global strike, space-based systems, and potentially undersea capabilities, functioning as strategic deterrent parallel to nuclear triad.

Russia believes the West is in decline and in death throes of global leadership, and in this violent struggle to come, NATO led by the United States will suppress anybody politically, economically, or militarily who pursues independent foreign policy, which Russia believes it is doing.