KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Tanks headed north into Ukraine this week from Russian-controlled Crimea. Not at the head of an invading army, but on a trainload of military equipment in such poor shape that Moscow had no use for it.

This humiliation illustrates the yawning chasm in the two former Soviet nations’ armed forces — one hollowed out by a lack of finances, the other benefiting from booming oil revenues.

The Russian military is much bigger, at 1 million men, compared to Ukraine’s 180,000 troops. The Ukrainian military has an estimated 200 combat aircraft and about 1,100 tanks, while Russia reportedly has about 1,400 combat aircraft and several thousand tanks.

The Russian military is also much better funded. It’s projected that Ukraine will spend almost $12,000 this year for each member of its armed forces, according to data provided by security affairs consultancy IHS Aerospace & Defence. Russia will spend seven times as much per person.

While much uncertainty still reigns in Ukraine, which is in dire economic straits and hoping to restore political normalcy with presidential elections set for May 25, its military is racing to figure out how to avoid another debacle at the hands of its giant neighbour.

It’s not clear yet exactly how much losing Crimea to Russia has degraded Ukraine’s defensive abilities.

“They’ve lost all the installations and facilities — army, navy, air bases and all the infrastructure that goes with them — in Crimea. They have lost several thousand soldiers and airmen and sailors,” said Stephen Blank, a military expert at the American Foreign Policy Council. “The Ukrainian heartland is now vulnerable to an invasion from the south, as well as from the east.”

Ukraine’s Defence Ministry press office said yesterday it was not yet able to provide figures on its losses. But according to Russian estimates last week, out of the 18,800 Ukrainian military servicemen in Crimea before the peninsula’s annexation by Russia, Ukraine was only withdrawing 1,500. The bulk of the remainder switched sides, Russian officials said.

Igor Sutyagin, a research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said in spite of the personnel drain, Ukraine scored a notable coup in retaining its crack Interior Minister troops.

“There were at least two highly trained, highly effective special operations units deployed in Crimea, and they are terribly dangerous for anybody,” he said.

The Kiev-based Centre of Military and Political Research estimates at least 51 Ukrainian navy vessels were seized by Russia, leaving only 10 ships still flying under a Ukrainian flag.

Mark Galeotti, a security expert at New York University, argued that loss might not be so bad.

“It was never really a force that could be expected to be involved in any serious war-fighting,” he said. “So the Ukrainians might not be able to occasionally send a frigate with a multinational force fighting pirates off the coast of Somalia. But that was always a political gesture to show that Ukraine was a big boy now, rather than anything else.”

What hardware Ukraine does get back comes with Russia’s disdain.

As one unnamed Russian military official told the state news agency RIA Novosti last week, the 350 Ukrainian tanks in Crimea dated back to the 1970s and would be of little use to Russia’s armed forces.

But the ease and speed with which Russia was able to peel away a chunk of Ukrainian territory nearly the size of Belgium points to serious structural shortcomings in Ukraine’s defences.

James Sherr, associate fellow at Chatham House think tank, said developments in Crimea have laid bare the damage wrought over the four-year rule of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in a popular uprising in February. He said the professionalisation of Ukraine’s military was greatly reduced after Yanukovych was elected in 2010 and that its command-and-control links were disrupted or damaged.