after checkmating the powerful north atlantic treaty organization nato through veiled threats of nuclear weapons president vladimir putin is now rapidly losing support even in russia after his air force reportedly hit a maternity hospital earlier this week western sanctions are in place the relatively small ukrainian army and brave civilians are putting up a fierce fight is the russian goliath losing the battle on the ground is ukraine going to be the new afghanistan defence strategists general syed ata hasnain and general shokin chauhan speak to padma rao sundarji for times online on russias military strategy in ukraine indias dependence on russian weaponry and russias growing closeness to pakistan and chinaq the russian army has 900000 troops more than 2 million reservists but it sent only about 150000 soldiers a fraction of its total strength into ukraine you have both worked and trained with the russian army and know it intimately a small start a gradual buildup is this routine military strategy before more firepower is unleashed is this a lull before a stormhasnain any war strategy has to be based on certain assessments and those are based on intelligence ukraine was part of the former soviet union the russians know it like the back of their hand they know the cities the people the leadership the military everything brinkmanship was obviously not the issue when president putin launched the war so he proved me wrong however i was clear even at that time that putin would not go whole hog because russia is not an island unto itself it has to live with the international community so putin was calibrating right in the beginning and it made sense to bring in a limited number of troops between 130150000 and combat aircraft the ukrainian air force is not much to write home about they have about 700 aircraft most of which are offroad the russians have encircled ukraine including the southern areas this has virtually blockaded ukraine like a landlocked state port cities like odessa have been targeted this is where there is precision engineering highquality technology and of course wheatrich ukraine is the granary of europe the intent was to squeeze the economy of ukraine so its not just the military application alone diverse things are happeningchauhan planning a war is based on a political objective what kind of objective and how quickly do they want to reach it there are about 60 70000 russian troops in belarus which is the northern thrust in the central sector another 6070000odd troops are moving towards kharkiv the second largest city and the third thrust would also be of around that number in the south to link up donetsk and luhansk and target the sea of azov to cut off ukraines access to it crimea is already theirs and theres been some action towards odessa so if you add all these up you get a maximum total of probably 180200000 troops which includes reserves