> It is extremely obvious that Russia would be crushed within days by a confrontation with NATO (but this conflict almost certainly wouldn't materialize due to nuclear weapons).

It's interesting the extent to which people haven't internalized this. Russia's industry has really ramped up on military production in the past two years, and their military will eventually get to the point where it can cause tremendous damage against a poorly-equipped Ukraine, through attrition. But the invasion revealed how far behind they are technologically, and a combined NATO force would turn off their entire military's command and control on day one of a real conflict.

It's an inversion of the situation forty or fifty years ago, when Europe had to rely on the the nuclear threat because the Russian conventional forces were considered to be overwhelming.