The Russian army made many mistakes during the invasion of Ukraine, but all of them overshadowed by one failure at the very beginning of the war – the inability to establish superiority in the air, writes The Wall Street Journal.
“Without controlling the sky, Russia, for example, cannot withstand destructive strikes on its warehouses and supply lines of Himars missiles, as well as the advancing Ukrainian troops, which have liberated the Kharkov region over the past month and continue to crowd the Russian units in Kherson,” – It is said in the publication.
Mass shelling of Ukrainian cities with rockets and drones -Kamikadze in the last week is another evidence of the failure of the air strategy. They show that Russia is forced to rely on remotely controlled aircraft, and not piloted, the newspaper writes.
According to the Oryx blog, which is calculated by documented losses of military equipment, Russia lost 62 aircraft and 53 helicopters on October 17. At least nine aircraft of the Black Sea Fleet was destroyed in August as a result of explosions at the Saki air base in Crimea; After that, 10 fighters were withdrawn from the peninsula, which even more limited Russia’s ability to use the Air Force in combat operations.