Is Russia No Longer a “Great Power?”

In The New York Sun, Conrad Black makes the case that Russia is no longer a “Great Power,” nation. He writes:

It is easy to lose sight of the fact, but as 2024 begins, the underlying correlation of forces between the Western Alliance spanning Central and Western Europe, North America, India, Australasia, Japan, and parts of the Middle East is in good condition and is more than competitive with its rivals and adversaries.

After two years of war in Ukraine, Russia appears to have suffered approximately 400,000 casualties, which in comparative population terms would be about a million casualties in the United States. Their military has been more unimpressive than at any time since the Russian armies collapsed under the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Having persuaded the world, including the incompetent American former chairman of Joint Chiefs, General Milley, that they would occupy all Ukraine within a month, they have only succeeded in occupying approximately one-fifth of it. The spectacle of a gang of mercenaries quitting the Russian ranks and being cheered by the public as they purported to march on Moscow was not an image-building event for the Putin claim of a swiftly reviving Russia, resuming its place at the top table of the world’s nations.

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