How Russia and Ukraine's militaries compare
Heavily armed Russian troops are pushing rapidly towards Ukraine's capital of Kyiv, and US officials are warning the city could fall within days.
The military capabilities of these two nations are so imbalanced that Ukraine's defiant president, Volodymyr Zelensky, implored his Western allies overnight to do more than impose sanctions to get Russian troops off Ukrainian soil.
Here's how the two country's military capabilities stack up.
Defense spending
Just a look at the amount of money the two nations spend on defense gives an indication of the gap between the two. Ukraine spent $4.7 billion in 2021, just over a tenth of nuclear-armed Russia's $45.8 billion, according to "The Military Balance" report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), published last week.
While the Russian government launched a drive in 2008 to modernize its military, after a brief war with Georgia laid bare equipment shortfalls, Ukraine's weapons are still largely from the Soviet era. In its ambitions to join NATO, however, Ukraine has reorganized the structure of its armed forces, and has plans to re-equip its air force with Western combat aircraft by the mid-2030s. It also plans to improve its naval capability.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-russia-and-ukraine-s-militaries-compare/ar-AAUiVeX
