Piece I read last night, essentially, said the Ukrainians are already fighting a guerilla war: small units with man-portable weapons ambushing Russian units. The Ukrainians admit that, in open country, they can’t do so well, but in a city, with lots of hiding places, they can chop up the Russians pretty easily. The article about Russia trying to recruit Syrian mercs said that the plan for the Syrians is using them to dig the Ukrainians out of cities, deadly room to room, fighting.
The population of Syria is 17.5M. The number of potential Syrian mercs still does not compare favorably with the number of potential Ukrainian guerillas.
Steve