They succeed with mass, not with excellence and cleverness. Ref: Ukraine.
I admit this is off topic, but wanted to interject, the Soviets of WW2 actually did succeed via excellence and cleverness. It's a common myth to repeat that they beat Germany with sheer numbers alone. That's too simplistic and is more inaccurate than correct. A better, yet still succinct explanation, is that the Germans were
tactically superior to the Red Army, but that the Red Army was
operationally superior. Turns out the operational level of war is a super important factor in winning a combined arms and mechanized war like WW2. (One could argue that the Red Army was strategically superior as well, but that's much more open to debate).
A way to explain Soviet operational superiority which ironically shows how the "overwhelming numbers" myth easily continues, is that the Soviets, by 1943, were able to mass far more rifles, tanks and assault guns on a much narrower front than the Wehrmacht. When you have a lot more men per mile in a small localized area, it's true that the Soviet's used "overwhelming numbers", but only in a limited area. In that area, the Germans were overwhelmed, but in other places which mattered less, the Germans would easily have more troops and units (though not decisively so). In other words, the Red Army continually put the right units in the right places at the right time more efficiently and consistently than the Germans. When you keep doing that over and over, you tend to win more and more battles and take more and more prisoners. Which is what happened. It was operational-level superiority.
In fact, the Soviets called this their "Deep Battle" doctrine. It was very similar to the concept of "Blitzkrieg," except more robust and frankly, better. In short, by 1945 the Red Army was out-Blitzkrieging the Germans everywhere and doing it better than the Germans ever did!
(Blitzkrieg was made famous because after the war, West Germany had plenty of former generals and other military historians publishing stuff in English, and of course they wanted to portray the evil Soviets as an overwhelming mass of soldiers, not an actually competent military, as that would lessen their prestige. And behind the Iron Curtain the Soviets obviously kept secret their own narratives and information as to how and why they were able to win against Hitler. After the fall of the USSR the military archives were opened in the 90s and Western military historians like David Glantz (and many others) have been able to better analyze how the Eastern Front really went down, and turns out the Red Army was a pretty good one after all).
Back to RET/FET stuff.
I agree Russia in Ukraine is an astonishingly poor showing, and clearly their military is nothing like it was in the 1940s. Good thing, cuz Putin is a bastard for invading.