i highly recomnend you to review your list of historians first.hruza said:
Just like dozens nations separated by space and time. Do you want to say they all have the same armor? Or they had distinct look from each other, after all? Answer is obvious, I really hope. This is why I said to OP, that is no sense to portrait west Slavs separately, even if “Not all Slavs are Russians or Ukrainians”, because western Slavs completely adopted war practices from western kingdoms. They used the same armors, not “somewhat similar”, but completely the same with their west neighbors.
This is already enough to show that they had distinct look and weaponry. Best example of it are evidences that there was developed production of composite bows in X-XI centuries in Novgorod, which was never common in the West. Cavalry also adopted heavy sabers much earlier, for reason. Do you know that there is no separate word for lance in Russian? Only spear and pike we have and the last name was borrowed. The same reason, I guess. In addition, where was a crossbow? These changes and features were reflecting of warfare, this is clear. Thus, it is sufficient to make a conclusion that warfare practices were developed by different path. Not SO significantly different path, of course. However, different enough for even you could distinct one from other on pictures without captions.
Your statements about “pomestie” horsemen are incorrect almost in all points. It was reformed later rather than to be an outcome of any previous reforms. New Order regiments, Reitars and so on. And these fighters were free to choose their armament, and for some reason, they almost always chose bow and arrows. Also you can see “кистень” (English has no separate word for it, right?) on the picture which was common in Rus’ in the most of its history (attention about adopting: and in nomadic tribes), and have no use as cavalry weapon in the west. Another penny in the piggy bank of distinction.
And to the last, about picture of settlement which should save from nomadic horse archers. What a pity that you cannot show this picture to medieval leader of West European kingdoms. With this picture, they definitely could learn how to deal with those Magyars. Alas, without this, all they could was to pray “sagittis hungarorum libera nos domine”, so Magyar came, Magyar saw, Magyar settled down where he wanted. Unlike this, East Slavic tribes could withstand against steppe raiders because of adopting their tactics from them and from more or less friendly Turkic tribes, Pechenegs, Berendei and Torkiis, which were partly assimilated later.
