Are you saying they might be.............
Gaz-lighting him?
Ooof.
I said they pre-staged ~50% of their army on the border not ~50% of their entire military.
Russia's military may have ~900,000 personnel excluding reservists but their army (including airborne troops) is only ~320,000 strong, so the 150,000+ army troops they pre-staged for the ground invasion would constitute ~50% of the army. The big 900k number the media like to parade around in articles on Ukraine includes the navy personnel, the air force personnel, the strategic nuclear weapons force and their military rail network forces (yes they still have those lol).
Granted, given Putin's current mental state it is possible he used sailors, aircraft mechanics and train drivers as ground troops to invade Ukraine (and judging by the ground troops performance it would explain a great many things) but I felt safe to presume otherwise in the math
I don't think Russia has depleted from their main standing army or reserves by anything like the number built up for Ukraine represents - from what I saw in the build up it isn't far from the truth that their ground forces are bulked out with mechanics and train drivers :s
That said I do think they've expended quite a lot of their more experienced elite soldiers putting them into battle alongside a larger number of extremely inexperienced soldiers which will have a significant cost on their regular armed forces capabilities.
Putin seems to have some kind of paranoia of using the main forces as if NATO is still some kind of threat like the early cold war era - despite most Western countries having cut their military to the bone and moved to a more defensive than offensive composition.
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