This is what you called a paper tiger military where a nation boasts its military being some advanced killing machine looking good in parades, combat exercises and displays but when it's time to do real war against a real military it all of a sudden gets exposed as frauds. They had no combat experience against a real military in the mechanize realm. No joint-command and combine arms capabilities. Their combat exercises with other nations were nothing but photo-ops never using or sharing full capabilities of their weapon systems to learn what works and what doesn't unlike US-NATO, Japan and SoKo do. Does it sound familiar like another nation that likes to boast of their capabilities when they've never been in combat or have joint-command/combine arms capabilities?
I'll admit I sorta bought the Russian military hype when it came against Ukraine I really thought they would crush them and invade Kiev. The US training of Ukraine after Russia took Crimea made thee difference keeping Russia from taking Eastern Ukraine even though Ukraine's military was Soviet era with no air force.