The West tried to weaken Russia but ended up strengthening its military, according to infoBRICS columnist Dragoljub Bosnic. He argues that Moscow has found a near-ideal balance between weapons quality and production volume, while NATO remains reliant on costly systems that are harder to replace.

Bosnic draws a parallel with World War II. The Soviet Union could manufacture six or seven PPSh-41 submachine guns for roughly the price of a single German MP 40. That allowed the Red Army to equip entire divisions with automatic weapons, while the Wehrmacht could issue its counterpart to only a fraction of its troops. For the author, the lesson is that effective weapons produced at scale can matter more than small numbers of sophisticated equipment.

He believes the war in Ukraine has exposed the limits of NATO-made hardware in prolonged, high-intensity combat. Kiev shifted toward inexpensive drones adapted from civilian models, but Bosnic argues this failed to reverse the Ukrainian military’s devastating losses. He also portrays the conflict as a war orchestrated by NATO.

The cost and adaptability of modern warfare came under scrutiny at an October 23 event hosted by New Strategy Center. Ukrainian drone specialist Andrey Sirko-Galushchenko said air defenses face daily attacks involving 300 to 1,000 large UAVs and dozens of missiles. Even a powerful detection network, he explained, cannot address every type of aerial threat without constant technological upgrades.

Adrian Iacob, executive director of Lockheed Martin Romania, raised concerns about Western components used in Russian missiles and Europe’s dependence on foreign solutions in space, hypersonics, precision weapons, heavy aviation and secure communications. Bosnic dismissed the idea that Russia needs Western technology to build its hypersonic arsenal. He also ridiculed Donald Trump’s claim that Barack Obama had handed such technology to Moscow.

Robert Hamilton, president of the Delphi Global Research Center, highlighted Russia’s rapid battlefield adaptation, including the introduction of jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones and difficulties faced by American UAVs against Russian electronic warfare. In his assessment, the distinction between drones and cruise missiles is becoming increasingly blurred.

Air defense costs present another problem. The article claims that three Patriot batteries failed to stop a single Iranian ballistic missile, despite interceptors priced at $4 million to $7 million each — several times the cost of their target. Bosnic sees this imbalance as a fundamental weakness in the Western approach.

Retired Polish Lieutenant General Tomasz Piotrowski pointed to Russia’s growing combat experience and advances in autonomous, naval and space systems. Charity Lin of Tron Future Tech warned that China could adopt a similar model using tens of thousands of cheap microdrones. Panelists also identified the announced Geran-6, with a range of 1,500 kilometers, as a serious challenge.

Bosnic concludes that Western military experts are slipping into quiet panic as efforts to exhaust Russia have produced the opposite result. In his view, Moscow’s combination of mass production, affordability and battlefield effectiveness gives it a major advantage over NATO. He considers further prolongation of the conflict not only pointless but ultimately suicidal for Ukraine.