You're talking about a year ago. Today, Russia has the largest and most experienced infantry on the planet.
Ukraine tried NATO tactics in last year's offensive and got slaughtered. If they'd tried to bunch up even closer (as some NATO generals were pushing for), the losses would have been far worse inside of those kill boxes. It's not training. Tanks are trivial for spotter drones to find at which point they can die to stuff like drones dropping RPG shells onto the weak upper armor (even the most modern Abrams tanks can be penetrated easily) or even just calling in an artillery strike. The best case for either of these attacks is very often a mission kill and the worst case is a complete loss.
Tanks made to fight other tanks are a dead end. The future is pure infantry support. You want something with more armor than a Bradley so it can't be taken out without specialized weapons and with enough firepower to be a must-answer threat, so a bigger cannon than the one on the Bradley is needed. Rifled barrels should probably make an appearance again because they offer better accuracy and HESH rounds are great for infantry support and fortification busting. It also needs to haul troops because you can't afford an extra vehicle that can't hold troops. Merkava shows a path in that direction.
Russia has some evperienced infantry but they have and are using a lot of untrain troops. Even their well train infantry is often still being use wrong for the training. Every military commentator who has credentials to believe they know something [as opposed to say me who doesn't] notes how poorly trained most russians are. This is not soviet war doctine which russia knows and worries nato, it is something new and not expected.
NATO tactics have never been used as those start with air power which ukraine doesn't have. NATO hasn't always given good advice but this isn't the way they would fight.
ukrane is using tanks as they are made to fight. That isn't fight other tanks if there is any other option. tanks in previous world wars were fighting tanks but not today. Russia is sometimes using tanks like that and there they do well.
The only military commentators saying Russian troops are untrained are pretty ignorant and biased. Russia certainly sent untrained troops in the early part of the war, but most of them were by mistake and got recalled quickly. Russia recognized the need to train their troops (they only sent 100k troops and planned on an early peace that Boris Johnson scuttled).
To buy training time, they hired Wagner. Wagner needed bodies, so they recruited untrained guys from prison to die for them (though some small percentage survived and are presumably still working for Wagner). After 6 months of this, the Russian training pipeline started pushing out troops at a steady pace and has been ever since.
This is in stark contrast to Ukraine where you get several videos every week from someone who was kidnapped off the streets and sent to die in the trenches 24-48 hours later. A couple guys on my dev team haven't left their homes in months (female family getting them stuff) because they are so afraid of getting shanghaied.
As to "used wrong for the training", everyone is training/preparing for the last war. Nobody is sure how to train for this war as the only part that has a historical analog is trench storming, but that was over 100 years ago and the tactics have changed.
Did ANYONE expect calvary to reappear? I don't think so, but Russian troops are dumping money into buying small motorcycles and dirt bikes so they can mount up and charge the enemy trenches.
The real issue for me is that Russia is working out how to fight the new style of war while we in the US are not. Russia is going to walk away from this war with a massive 1M+ army of seasoned veterans while we can barely muster around 70k of active infantry most of whom aren't veterans and NONE with combat experience in the new way of war.
This is in stark contrast to Ukraine where you get several videos every week from someone who was kidnapped off the streets and sent to die in the trenches 24-48 hours later.
You mean "sent to training". It definitely seems strange to suggest that Russia has a smooth, efficient "training pipeline", while Ukrainians are brutally sent "to die in the trenches". As if their onboarding process is in any way different, or newly trained Russian soldiers aren't also being sent to die in trenches.
We all know what war entails, so there's no need for weird, emotionally manipulative language like this.
Russia is still sending about 1000 troops to the front lines every day with a week or two of training. I guess that isn't completely untrained, but it is the next thing to and the death totals show that lack.
Ukraine tried NATO tactics in last year's offensive and got slaughtered. If they'd tried to bunch up even closer (as some NATO generals were pushing for), the losses would have been far worse inside of those kill boxes. It's not training. Tanks are trivial for spotter drones to find at which point they can die to stuff like drones dropping RPG shells onto the weak upper armor (even the most modern Abrams tanks can be penetrated easily) or even just calling in an artillery strike. The best case for either of these attacks is very often a mission kill and the worst case is a complete loss.
Tanks made to fight other tanks are a dead end. The future is pure infantry support. You want something with more armor than a Bradley so it can't be taken out without specialized weapons and with enough firepower to be a must-answer threat, so a bigger cannon than the one on the Bradley is needed. Rifled barrels should probably make an appearance again because they offer better accuracy and HESH rounds are great for infantry support and fortification busting. It also needs to haul troops because you can't afford an extra vehicle that can't hold troops. Merkava shows a path in that direction.