For three years and more since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, we have become accustomed to referring to Russia’s “war machine.” 

The phrase denoted a powerful and malevolent force, big and dark and dirty, capable of grinding down its enemy while uncaringly sacrificing its own infantry in great numbers. That, by the way, is how the Russian army has operated since at least the Napoleonic era, throwing men into the grinder, accepting worse losses than the enemy, but emerging victorious because it is bigger and more numerous than the forces it faces and therefore can outlast them.