The Ukrainians are better trained, theyre just having problems with the fact that the Russians are using unique technology like "mines" and "planes".

There's so much emphasis on how the Spartans are the dangerous, tough, manly men, the only force that can save the West™ from the removed other.

My favourite scene for this is when Leonidas yells at the Greeks for not being professional soldiers, 'cos IRL some 400 of those would've been from Thebes, which not only also had a professional military, it had a larger and better trained one, and would already have defeated Sparta in battle multiple times by this point.

Thermopylae was a major victory for the Persians. Again, Thermopylae, whether an attempt to delay or not, was a crushing strategic defeat.Their initial strategy was to hold the pass against the Persians successfully, not to get surrounded and be massacred. Plain and simply strategic disaster. It allowed the Persians to continue down the peninsular. They were barely delayed. There is little to no evidence it actually inspired the Greeks, and it almost certainly in fact demoralized them and inspired the Persians, which when you think about it is not at all surprising. The Athenians had to flee Athens and let it burn. Attica was conquered. In what way did a couple days delay change any of this? The last stand wasn't even what allowed the tactical retreat. The knew from their scouts the night before that the Persians had surrounded them, and the rest then disengaged without the Spartans last stand making a difference. In any case the group was small, and so was not decisive in the future.

At Plateia, the Spartans would even try to get out of the main position in the battle line, offering it to the Athenians, who a generation before had beaten the Persians at Marathon, which also contradicts the idea that at the time they felt themselves militarily superior. They were probably also aware that in this open space their would suffer at the hands of the Persian archers and cavalry.

On the Salamis point: Herodotus directly refutes the point by noting the Athenians tricking them. The Athenians knew that they would have a better chance at Salamis, rather than in open waters which is what the Spartans wanted. The Spartans wanted to retreat to the Isthmus, to repeat Thermopylae essentially.

The Peloponnesian war is a whole other can of worms, because we are talking about a generation later. At the outset, as Thucydides makes clear, the Athenians appeared to have the clear advantage due to their navy and economic superiority. Sparta had no navy and was economically backwards in comparison, with no public treasury. Furthermore, Sparta's citizen population was declining steadily in a trend that would never reverse. The Spartan's used their dominance of the Peloponnese to form militias from other poleis as the bulk of their force against the Athenian alliance, giving them a land army larger than the Athenians. We can call this entire group 'the Spartan forces' if one likes, but that just seems misleading.

In the early stages of the war, they proved how ineffective they were. They had one strategy: marching a larger land army up to Attica and hoping the Athenians would be stupid enough to face them on the open field. They came, they burnt some farms, then they went home when campaigning season was over. At the same time the Athenians easily dominated the seas. The Athenians won at Sphakteria in 425 BC., and lost at Delion in 424 BC and Amphipolis in 422 BC. The Spartan's more effectively sent a force to Thrace to threaten Athenian economic interests. The Peace of Nikias, 421 BC left Athens as well of as at the outset of the war. Sparta had achieved no main war objectives. They were vulnerable in the middle of the war due to their treaty with Argos expiring, who declared war on Sparta soon after. The Spartans at this point were desperate for a treaty.

The Athenians were showing a clear overall superiority in the war, up to this point. The Spartans were simply unable to beat them soundly and achieve any serious objectives. In fact they were begging for a treaty to get their capture men back. They could only beat them once the Athenians stupidly, in their hubris, took on the catastrophic expedition to Sicily, where they lost half their fleet and thousands of their veteran soldiers. The Spartans then allied with the Persians, because the Persians correctly perceived Athens as the bigger geopolitical threat.

In other words, Sparta's victory was due to a singe majorly stupid but lucky strategic error by the Athenians, tactical mistakes of the commander, all indicating hubristic overconfidence due to their superior position, combined with support for Sparta from Persia (the greatest power in that part of the world at that time). But it in no way demonstrates that the Spartans were better at war in any systematic or institutional sense. Once they had won well then of course they could dominate for 30 years. War is the continuation of politics by other means, and how effective you are is based on your general, systematic, institutional capacity to engage in violent, coercive action that will allow you to achieve your political aims. Sparta did get the latter, but by luck, frankly.

You seem to have misread my point about individual fighting. I am not suggesting the Spartans though you could Jedi your way through war. They were very aware that the opposite is the case and so are known to have banned wrestling competitions and such, as distractions from proper military training. I was simply pointing out the invalidity of the idea that they were individually superior super soldiers - a part of the myth - and that this would have been irrelevant anyhow.

You seem to have misunderstood my other point. We are not talking about whether they could effectively wage war in their social context. Obviously they could. So could everyone else. They were notable in the group. We are discussing a myth which has long permeated throughout Western culture of the Spartans as this Herculean race of warriors unparalleled in the arts of war, whereas there is no evidence for this.

During the Archaic period they showed no superiority whatsoever. Their power increased during this period, but this is almost certainly simply due to the fact that they were more populous, having more citizens than the neighboring poleis. They were one of the largest cities in ancient Greece. No sources tell thus anything about any peculiar form of military excellence compared to any other group of people. Ancient stories from the time in fact tell of Argos, not Sparta, as were the best warriors were from. In a later battle with the Argives in 550BC they would come out equally badly. Nor do the Spartan poems/songs we have from this time suggest their eminence. The end point of this period includes Thermopylae. Herodotus was born a few years before the battle. He gushes about them, because he lived in a climate of their propaganda. But he does not actually produce any evidence in his descriptions of the battle that show any kind of actual superiority. Operationally, they fight like everyone else. All they did was try take advantage of terrain, like every other army in history with two neurons to rub together. Again, it was, tactically, a crushing defeat. We know the accounts are propagandized because the Spartans did not make up the majority of the fighters there, thought they led it, yet we almost only hear about them, including in the generation after the battle. It is only after Thermopylae that they build up their legendary reputation. They surrendered at the battle of Sphakteria (425 BC).

It is only after Thermopylae and the Persian war that the Spartan develop some very limited tactics that give them some edge, perhaps, but this was balanced by many other factors. Their basic institutions remained like those of the other Hellenes. They were never militarized from birth to be supersoldiers. No source ever tells us or demonstrates their individual superiority as warriors or generals. The had no proper light infantry, and their cavalry was worthless (see Xenophon, Hellenika 6.4.10-11). They were regularly soundly defeated when battles relied on these other factors. The only edge they had was in their phalanx tactics. They were disciplined with decent officers, communications, commands and manoever, physically fit and effective at formation drill, which other states didn't do and was significant. This allowed them to win pitched hoplite battles, until the defeats by Thebes at Tegyra, Leuktra and Second Mantineia, but this is a basic form of warfare and speaks rather to how unsophicated archaic and classical greek warfare was. But their only significance was in the Greek Pelopponese, and was they faced militaries with far more sophicated militaries they didn't stand a chance.

For a brief period of time - and only after Thermopylae - they were better at a a very limited form of pitched hoplite warfare due to their emphasis on training and discipline. But they showed no significant advances in any other areas. Actually, precisely their overeliance on this form of warfare, due to their social class structure (which didn't really allow for light infantry and effective cavalry), lead to their military abilities being very limited and falling behind other powers. While their superiority amongst local Greek states in this sense was clear, it was overall marginal in my opinion when we include other factors like military diversity, strategy, and economic power. The dominance at this specific form of warfare lasted, say, 150 years. Their actual political domination of Greece far less time, say 30 years.