Ukraine's underfunded and outdated military, with Cold War-era technology and salaries to match, would be an anemic deterrent if the Russian invasion of Crimea were to widen into a bigger confrontation, according to a 2012 Ukrainian Ministry of Defense report.
Obsolete tanks and fighter planes, a miniscule navy and a dwindling army whose approximately 100,000 soldiers earn about half the nationÂ’s average salary all bode poorly for the nation of 45 million what declared its independence from Russia in 1991.
“It is absolutely not a combat ready force. It’s sharply underfunded, and they don’t have any real air or surface to air or capacity compared to what Russia can deploy — even though Russia is no paragon of military readiness either,” Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told FoxNews.com.
