The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) claims that the effectiveness of Ukraine’s air defenses has kept the Russian air force primarily inside Russian territory. On Monday, the news was made public.
The report is the latest recent evidence that Russia’s once-proud air force has fallen short during the battle in Ukraine.
Many experts predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s air force would demonstrate its prowess in the early days of the fight after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. For these and other reasons, many specialists picked Russia to emerge victorious from the conflict. While Russian ground forces continue to engage the Ukrainian military, the air force has mostly remained on the sidelines.
Guy McCardle, the managing editor of the Special Operations Forces study (SOFREP), said, “The Russians have a pretty good air force,” contradicting the findings of the Ministry of Defense report. All that matters to them is that it continues to function normally.
In an intelligence brief released on Monday, the Ministry of Defense stated that during the summer, Russian tactical combat aircraft have typically carried out over one hundred sorties per day; however, the operations are usually limited to flying over Russian territory because of the threat posed by Ukraine’s air defenses.
The British government was also made aware that Russia’s airborne division had not been able to contribute much to ground combat. Russia’s Ministry of Defense has remarked that Russia’s Air Force has been constantly sending large amounts of resources to assist ground operations in Ukraine without seeing any significant gains.
The British assessment follows comments made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday during a military ceremony, in which he claimed that Ukrainian air defenses had shot down more than 5,500 Russian aircraft targets since the conflict’s inception.
Ukraine’s president claims that his country’s military forces have destroyed over 2,000 of Russia’s attack drones and over 3,500 Russian aircraft, helicopters, and missiles.
