This analysis was made by the Council on Foreign Relations, and is full of the sorts of opinions you might expect from that smug club of neo-cons.

Nonetheless, it is useful, as it explains some aspects of the military balance between Russia and its neighbors.

Introduction

The Russian military suffered years of neglect after the Soviet collapse and no longer casts the shadow of a global superpower. However, the Russian armed forces are in the midst of a historic overhaul with significant consequences for Eurasian politics and security.

Russian officials say the reforms are necessary to bring a Cold War-era military into the twenty-first century, but many Western analysts fear they will enable Moscow to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy, often relying on force to coerce its weaker neighbors.

Some say Russian interventions in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014—both former Soviet republics seeking closer ties to the West—demonstrate that President Vladimir Putin is prepared to use military force to reestablish Russian hegemony in its near abroad.

What are Russian conventional military capabilities?

Both in terms of troops and weapons, Russian conventional forces dwarf those of its Eastern European and Central Asian neighbors (see Table 1), many of which are relatively weak ex-Soviet republics closely allied with Moscow.

Russia has a military pact with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan through the Collective Security Treaty Organization, formed in 1992. Moscow also stations significant troops in the region: Armenia (3,200), Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (7,000), Moldova's separatist Transnistria region (1,500), Kyrgyzstan (500), and Tajikistan (5,000).

As part of defense reforms, most Russian ground forces are to be professionalized and reorganized into formations of a few thousand troops for low- and medium-intensity conflicts. But for the foreseeable future many will remain one-year conscripts with limited training (military service is compulsory for Russian men aged eighteen to twenty-seven).

The Airborne Assault Forces, which comprises about thirty-five thousand troops and whose commander answers directly to Putin, is Russia's elite crisis-reaction force. A Special Operations Command, also a reserve of Putin, was created in 2013 to manage special operators outside Russian borders.

Moscow is intent on remilitarizing its Arctic territory and is restoring Soviet-era airfields and ports to help protect important hydrocarbon resources and shipping lanes. (Russia has the world's largest fleet of icebreakers, which are regularly required to navigate these waters.) In late 2013, Putin ordered the creation of a new strategic military command in the Russian Arctic.

Meanwhile, rearmament has been slow, and much of the military's equipment remains decades old. The once formidable Soviet navy is now little more than a coastal protection force, experts say. All of the navy's large vessels, including its flagship and sole aircraft carrier, the non-nuclear Kuznetsov, are holdovers from the Cold War. (By comparison, the United States has ten nuclear carriers and builds several new warships each year.) Russian air power will also be limited, at least in the short term. Aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi is developing several new advanced warplanes, including a fifth-generation "stealth" fighter (the T-50), but production has been sluggish in some cases, and most of the current air force dates from the 1980s. Russia has made the modernization of its air and space defenses a top priority of the rearmament program, establishing a consolidated Aerospace Defense Command in 2011. The mainstay of this defense network is the S-400, a long- to medium-range surface-to-air missile system, to be deployed near Moscow and strategic positions along Russia's perimeter. A more advanced S-500 is in development. What are Russian nuclear capabilities?

Russia's vast nuclear arsenal remains on par with the United States and is the country's only residual great power feature, military experts say. Moscow has about 1,500 strategic warheads on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarines, and heavy bombers. These numbers comply with the so-called New START treaty with the United States, which came into force February 2011. Russia is also believed to have some 2,000 nonstrategic (also referred to as tactical, theater, or battlefield) nuclear warheads. Russia leaned on its nuclear deterrent as its conventional force languished in the years after the Soviet collapse. NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 added to fears in the Kremlin that the U.S.-led alliance might impede Russia's ability to act in the region. Moscow appeared to lower its nuclear threshold in 2000, permitting the use of such weapons in response to major conventional attacks. By comparison, Soviet doctrine reserved nuclear weapons for use only in retaliation for a nuclear attack. Much of the Russian nuclear deterrent is being modernized: a new class of ballistic missile submarine is coming into service; some strategic bombers are being upgraded; and there are plans to replace all Soviet-era ICBMs over the next decade or so. What is the Russian military budget?

At close to $90 billion for 2013, the Russian military budget has more than doubled over the last decade (see Figure 2), trailing behind only China ($188 billion) and the United States ($640 billion), according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). (Data includes funding for armed services, paramilitary forces, military space activities, foreign military aid, and military R&D.)