Troop numbers however are nothing without firepower to back it up. That said, this is a huge Russian force and is far bigger than the forces Russia sent for the first and second Chechen wars and is equivalent in size to the very biggest peacetime operations of the Soviet Union or NATO during the Cold War.

However, Russia has only put in place some 200,000 troops around Ukraine for the invasion, meaning the forces are fairly evenly balanced in terms of boots on the ground, and Ukraine has called up all men from 18 to 60 who are able to fight, meaning they may actually have the advantage in terms of sheer number of personnel. Russia has a vast standing army (the world's fifth biggest), with some 900,000 active personnel and a further two million reservists, compared to UkraineвЂ™s 196,000 active troops and 900,000 reservists. Here's an overview of how the two fighting forces stack up: Troop numbers How the Ukrainian and Russian forces compare

Ukraine's Antonov AN-225 'Mriya', the largest plane in the world, destroyed by Russia.

How Russia-Ukraine war fits into Biden's State of the Union.

Can Ukraine join EU and how long would it take?.

Theories about the mysterious 'Z' on Russian tanks in Ukraine.

Just ask Napoleon about the invasion of Russia back in 1812. Fail to get the logistics right and any invasion of a country will fall to pieces.

Secondly, the Russians need to put in place logistics and supply chains to invade, with some footage emerging from Ukraine suggest they are already struggling to do.ДЄrmies march on their stomachs, and in the modern era, on the fuel supplies for their vehicles. Firstly, the Ukrainian troops are defending their homeland, while the Russian forces are invading their neighbours, who for most Russians are not seen as deadly enemies, but a closely-related people. There are however a couple of areas where the Ukrainian forces have an advantage. On almost every single metric the Russian forces overwhelm their Ukrainian counterparts in terms of size, strength and the technological level of equipment. As Russian troops invade Ukraine, seeking to overrun the capital Kyiv and depose the government, the imbalance between the armed forces of the two countries is a major factor in the conflict.

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