A young Ukrainian soldier in Perevalne on March 2. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
As the Russian government deploys more forces in the Crimea, its upper chamber votes to grant President Putin the right to intervene in Ukraine and the rhetoric in Moscow plunges into toxic depths of misinformation and vitriol, the risk of a military conflict looks greater than ever. In response, both as a political signal of its determination and as a sensible precaution, the Ukrainian government has mobilized its military, but the actual capabilities of this force is still something of an unknown quantity. Much will depend on how Moscow assesses the abilities and resolution of the Ukrainian armed forces.
The total active strength of the Ukrainian armed forces is around 130,000 — 75,000 in the army, 41,000 in the air force, 14,000 in the navy. To these should be added another 32,000 Interior Troops, 42,000 Border Troops and some 9,000 Civil Defense Troops. Furthermore, in theory the military could be expanded to almost a million by calling up all the reserves, but this is actually questionable; most of the reservists have little recollection of the training they received, and raising this force would damage the already-precarious economy.
This doesn’t sound much compared with Russia’s 850,000, especially as the Ukrainian military has been under pressure. There have been long-term efforts to reform it, but the plan is meant to have reached fruition by 2025, which is little comfort to today’s government. The problem has been a lack of resources: Kyiv has been spending around 1% of its GDP on its military, despite recurring promises to commit more money. This is also a military in the throes of a final shift from being a mix of volunteers and conscripts to an all-professional force. The current cohort of draftees are the last envisaged, with this year meant to have seen a slight reduction in the overall size of the military as it completes the transition.
As if this were not problem enough, last year saw the high command thrown into disarray following a corruption scandal involving three senior figures. One, Admiral Igor Kabanenko, First Deputy Chief of the General Staff, was actually hospitalized after security agents searched his offices. In the final act of his presidency, Viktor Yanukovych sacked Colonel General Volodymyr Zamana, head of the armed forces, when he refused to deploy his men against protesters, and now the newly-appointed head of the navy, Admiral Denis Berezovsky, has reportedly defected to the Russian-backed Crimean government.
For all this, though, Ukraine’s military capacities ought not to be underestimated. While unable to prevent the Russian occupation of Crimea (a peninsula where Russian Naval Infantry marines already outnumbered local Ukrainian forces), they could be expected to put up a far more robust resistance to any wider Russian incursion. After all, while many soldiers are ethnic Russians, that does not mean they are not also patriotic Ukrainian citizens. There would likely be some defections, but more common would be desertions, as soldiers quietly abandon their posts.
The army is still configured on essentially Soviet lines, even if there has been limited modernization of vehicles, weapons and equipment. The domestically-produced T-84 ‘Oplot’ tank is a reasonably effective design, comparable to Russian designs, for example. However, this Soviet legacy is in some ways an advantage as it means the Ukrainians are better prepared to fight the kind of war the Russians — also still leaning heavily on their Soviet experiences — are trained to fight.
Furthermore, while Ukraine’s military is one sixth the size of Russia’s, their larger neighbor cannot afford politically or even economically to assemble more than a fraction of these forces for a war. It cannot denude its other borders, nor strip the North Caucasus of troops. Many are also unsuited to such a conflict, such as the nuclear forces or the Pacific Fleet. All told, the Russians are unlikely to be able to muster more than — at most — a two-to-one advantage, which is a ratio still typically favoring the defender when there is not a massive technological and qualitative disparity. In this case there is not: the Russian forces have their own problems.
Besides which, even if the quality and morale of many Ukrainian units may be uncertain, there are relatively elite units which could take the brunt of any initial assault, including the 95th Independent Airmobile Brigade, the 25th Airborne Brigade and the Naval Infantry Brigade. After all, while the USA, European Union and NATO may be uncertain how to respond to Russia’s move into the Crimea, it is unlikely that they would be so sanguine about any wider invasion of a country on NATO’s border. The Ukrainians may just have to put up enough of a fight to delay the Russians long enough for outside powers to bring their own political, economic and potentially even military sanctions to bear. Or perhaps they simply need to look as if they could put up enough of a fight for that to be enough to curb the Kremlin’s enthusiasms.
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