The Russian military can completely destroy every major city in the Ukraine, if Putin didn't care about civilian casualties. I don't know why people underestimate the military strength of Russia and China so much. They have "borrowed" a lot of the technology from us, Britain and the EU for decades. I think people like to underestimate them because it makes them feel better. They are still a force to be reckoned with and have far less woke personnel in their military than we do. They fight to win, not for politics. Putin and Xi have been weeding out foreign intelligence assets for quite some time now. The contacts of the foreign intelligence within their countries have been arrested tried and executed as traitors. The "political opponents" that he suppresses were people that foreign intelligence agents were trying to cultivate to undermine Putin and Xi and their respective governments. That is why the media always painted them as murderous dictators, they were trying to gain some victory points with CIA failed plots.