"Russia vs Ukraine in 2014" Topic

If such an "military" conflict were to occur. The following articles show charts of the Ukraine and Russian forces strengths in comparison:

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How much of Russia's forces are on the Ukraineian border? How much are on the borders of Poland, China, and the various 'stans?

How much of Russia's forces are on the Ukraineian border?

They say ~40,000

Those numbers are so far off, particularly on the Ukrainian ground forces, as to be laughable. Through budget cuts, corruption, mismanagement, etc., I doubt that they could field 20,000 combat equipped troops throughout the countryside. The status of most of their combat vehicles is unknown, but my guess is that less than 20% are operational and have crews. If there's more than 50 combat aircraft that are operational I would be very surprised and I'm guessing that they have limited, if any operational experience about how to coordinate modern air/ground combat operations. Russia can walk in there any time and take over, but I think that they are weighing the political consequences, which is the only thing stopping them right now.

I doubt anyone on either side, or in the world, has any delusion about the outcome of a Russian invasion. As Aegis said, I suspect Putin resists because of the political consequences.

Regarding Russian military strength, I strongly suspect that they keep a strong presence at or close to the Chinese border. I am sure Russian military strategists have not lost site of the fact that China is spending twice as much as Russia on defense (though a lot of that focus is naval), has a growing population hungry for resources, and shares a border with them. They should feel a lot more threatened by that border than the solidifying NATO alliances in Europe.

But then I suspect a lot of the senior Russians have ties back to the Cold War, and it can be hard to shake that thinking.

How much of the Ukrainian army is actually liable to put arms against the Russian army and not deserting instead?

Was not the Ukrainian government (the current Kiev one, I mean) putting up a new police force? If it was doing so, wasn't it to make for the regular police likely lack of commitment to said government?

Yea, I suspect the imbalance is much less than shown, at least for the hardware, e.g. jets, helos, and tanks, since Russia can't afford to field all its assets against Ukraine.

The Chinese border is probably the most worrisome to them.

Perhaps Russia can pull off a 1.5 – 2:1 ratioo against Ukraine, should they decide to fight, but it's not clear if that will be enough, in a full-blown war.

Of course, Russia can "afford" a lot more than Ukraine can, economically.

Russia will most likely lose a protracted guerrilla war, should the West arm them with RPGs, and provide other small arms to combat them, like we did in Afghanistan, decades ago.