"KYIV, Ukraine -- Eight years after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and fomented war in the country's east, Kyiv's once-feeble military is bigger and better armed. It is still far outgunned by Moscow, but it could inflict a high price on any invading army, say its leaders and analysts.
Facing off against the troops and tanks that Russian President Vladimir Putin has massed around Ukraine is a force of roughly 260,000, trained by Western advisers and equipped with its own upgraded armored vehicles, U.S. and British antitank missiles and Turkish armed drones.
Ukrainian officers, however, say the biggest difference from 2014, when Kyiv's forces failed to stop the Kremlin's territorial grab, is the combat experience gained over years battling Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine and a much stronger sense of national identity that has resulted from the conflict.
"It's a completely different army," said Oleksiy Danilov, the top national security adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukrainian officials and analysts say the new strength of Ukraine's army could alter Mr. Putin's evaluation of risks,as the costs in Russian lives and sanctions from the West would be much greater from an all-out assault.
Russia's 2014 operation to seize Crimea relied on a rapid, covert deployment of special forces, which met little resistance from the Ukrainian military. Sgt. Anna Boyko recalls that her unit was ordered to fall back to Kyiv. "We didn't shoot a bullet," she said.
If Russia attacks now, she said, "this time will be different."
Faced with further incursions in the eastern part of the country, Ukraine's army could barely muster the fuel and batteries to send their Soviet-era vehicles to the front.
A senior Biden administration official said that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian armed forces were weakened by corruption.
U.S. and NATO training exercises have helped rebuild Ukrainian forces, the official said. "They are simply much more capable, much more ready, much better organized."
Since Russia's seizure of Crimea, the U.S. has delivered $2.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine. Three air shipments arrived from the U.S. in the past week as part of a fresh $200 million package. The U.S. said it also would transfer five Russian-made Mi-17 transport helicopters to Ukraine.
Last week, British military planes ferried light antiarmor-weapons systems to Kyiv.The Baltic nations of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have shipped, with Washington's permission, American-made Javelin antitank weapons and Stinger air-defense systems, U.S. officials said.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in an interview that more aid is needed. "We need antimissile systems, antiaircraft systems, more help at sea, and electronic warfare, unmanned aerial vehicles, jamming against drones, et cetera," he said.
U.S. lawmakers who recently visited Ukraine say there is a need to expedite additional military-aid deliveries, including Javelins, antiship missiles, antiair-defense missiles,night-vision equipment and other provisions.
Ukraine currently uses Soviet-era systems, which have been modernized but lag behind some of the high-tech equipment used by the Russian military.
Russia's air power and its missile forces would give it a big advantage over Ukraine, allowing it to inflict considerable damage even without a large deployment of ground forces.
Training also has been critical to Ukraine's military transformation. Members of the Florida Army National Guard are the latest in a rotation of U.S. military brigades working alongside the Ukrainian armed forces in western Ukraine.
"Ukraine is not planning on offensive activities," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said last week in a news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "We are just working on strengthening our defenses."" [1]
1. World News: Beefed-Up Ukraine Military Still Outgunned
Salama, Vivian; Marson, James. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 28 Jan 2022: A.7.
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