The impact of the airfield strike is immense and war-altering. Russia’s best remaining bombers, the Tu-160, having to be relocated 6,000km away from the Ukrainian border is in practical terms, as good as having destroyed them. Russia’ most effective strategy (other than corrosive misinformation) has been stand-off terror bombing for the last couple of years. Now that appears at best paused while they figure out some new security measures, and at worst - permanently blunted. It’s just staggering how stupid they are and how badly they overplayed their hand with this ridiculous war.

  • The_v@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I don’t think they have much choice. Their air defense capabilities at this point are seriously degraded from before the war started. Ukraine as knocked out almost 1,200 of their anti-air capability.

    At this point they need to constantly move them to different locations. Never lingering at any one location longer than a week or so. Utilizing hanger space whenever possible to hide them.

    Ukraine has shown that they can effectively target almost anywhere in Russian now with enough time and motivation. Russia has been using these planes to terror bomb civilians.