Going back to that point about the Russian economy and what that means for the military,

I mean, clearly if we were talking about a country with the military capability of Spain or Italy,

we wouldn't have a crisis of these proportions because Russia clearly is able to punch above its economic weight in some sense.

Is that to your mind primarily a legacy of the Soviet Union?

The fact, of course, that the Russian

military was able to inherit the nuclear weapons, but also the very advanced aviation industry

as well? Or do you think there's perhaps more to it than that? I think there's more to it than that,

because, I mean, if you look at the situation in the Russian armed forces 12, 15 years ago,

they were still dire. I mean, the Russian

armed forces, outside of some of the key nuclear forces, really went into a headline decline

in the 1990s. And even when they were involved in invading Georgia, what was it, 2008. They were finding that, you know, to fly the

planes, the serviceable planes they had effectively, the ordinary pilots didn't have enough

experience. They were using the test pilots and the instructors. They were the only ones with

enough flight hours to be competent. There was a lot more to that, and that even persists

at this time.

Putin has spent the last 10 years, particularly when oil prices were high, investing very

heavily in the military.

And with that, there's been a very strong investment in the arms trade.

Then US 400 anti-aircraft missile, which is a very effective weapon.

They've really been trying to sell that around the world, and they've been trying to sell

some of the new sequoies around, basically to help pay for that part of the military

industrial complex.

...