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Originally Posted by Garry
I wouldn't be so sure. In my non-prefessional view there are few divisions in Russian army which are capable to meet high challenges but rest are very inaddequate. The best officers have left army in last 12 years, while tallented young people have considered army the least attractive place in 90-es and early 2000-es. This led to high losses in Chechnya... Among those best divisions are Pskov Paratrooper Division, 201 infantry and Ryazan Paratrooper Divsiion. In general it would make less than 100,000 soldiers.
In addition to that Russia will have problems with bringing enough forces and supplies to Amur region (Chinese border) fast enough - there are two railroads and both go along Chinese border. When required Chinese army will cut them first. On other side Chinese supply lines would be much shorter.
Air superiority might be problem as well - too few strips in the area and too few fighters are based there, while China has good part of its AF close to border with North Korea.
And the last but not least is issue of numbers - China may easily outnumber Russian troops in the area.
So nukes is the only hope that they would never try any Blitzkrieg...
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Agreed. The biggest difficulty would be cutting the raillines
before mobilization, to try and prevent additional Russian forces from making it in theater. Also, a clear strategic direction is necessary, otherwise China will just end up flailing about inside Siberia. I have no doubt that Russia's troops are superior to that of China (and they have 6 category A formations along the Siberian border), but if the Chinese play their cards right, they could take much of Siberia away from Russia. Assuming no nukes.
Because Russia has nukes, China would be obliterated very quickly, and it's ground forces would grind to a halt as they run out of supplies.