Russia and Ukraine: why Moscow has failed to control the skies of the neighboring country despite having one of the largest air forces in the world

It is one of the great mysteries of the war in Ukraine.

More than three weeks after the invasion began on February 24, Russia has not been able to control the skies of the neighboring country, despite having one of the largest air forces in the world.

It has gone against all odds: as Kremlin troops swarmed around Ukraine in recent months, Western intelligence and experts everywhere agreed that it would be a matter of two or three days before Russian warplanes asserted their supremacy. over the airspace of the neighboring country.

“It is a disconcerting fact from the point of view of military strategy,” he tells BBC Mundo walter dornProfessor of Defense Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC).

“Despite having an air force in numbers of equipment and firepower markedly inferior to the Russian, the Ukrainians are still flying and their air defenses are still considered viable,” he adds.

And it is that, according to the expert, control of the air is one of the fundamental bases of all modern warfare, since it guarantees the advance of troops by land and strongly limits the movement of enemy forces.

In a report published last week, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK’s leading defense and security think tank, noted that after the invasion began, destroying Ukraine’s air defenses was “the next logical and widely anticipated step, as seen in almost every military conflicts since 1938″.

However, this has not happened and the Ukrainian army, although it has also suffered numerous losses, has announced that it has shot down numerous Russian planes throughout the fighting.

In fact, multitudes of videos on social networks, whose legitimacy has been confirmed by military experts, show how Russian fighter planes and helicopters drift down, engulfed in flames.

The aerial resistance of the Ukrainians has been so surprising that it has even led to the creation of urban legends, such as the so-called “ghost of kyiv”, an alleged pilot who has shot down numerous Russian aircraft.

But how to explain this situation?

air superiority

According to Dorn, air supremacy “means complete control of the skies,” including the ability to fly anywhere, anytime, with little or no risk of being shot down.

“The supremacy of air provides the benefit of a third dimension of space. And it also denies that benefit to the enemy,” he explains.

Military experts agree that Russia had the military capability to quickly control the skies over Ukraine given its military might.

According to data from Global Firepower, the VKS – Russia’s air force – is the third largest in the world, second only to those of the US and China.

At the start of the conflict, Moscow had 1,391 warplanes (compared to 132 for the Ukraine) and 948 helicopters (the Ukrainians had only 55).

Meanwhile, Russia’s overall defense budget of $45.8 billion is nearly 10 times that of the neighboring country.

As Jennifer Cafarella, chief of staff of the Institute for the Study of War, explains to BBC Mundo, the Russians have also previously used and trained their air forces for combat, as they did during the Syrian war.

“The central contribution that the Russians made at the beginning of the intervention in Syria was the introduction of their air power, which was decisive in enabling a pro-Assad militia group, including Syrian militias and foreign fighter groups provided by Iran” , it says.

“Russian air power was enough to allow these groups to achieve a great victory on the battlefield,” he adds.

However, military analysts and intelligence reports suggest that the Kremlin, for unclear reasons, decided not to deploy a large outpost of its air force in Ukraine.

“It seems pretty obvious now that Russia believed they could take Ukraine much more easily, that they weren’t going to meet the resistance that they have,” Dorn says.

“This assumption apparently led them to not having the air forces ready to be deployed, although there are also reports that there is some fear among Russian generals of inflicting heavy losses on their expensive aircraft,” he adds.

Lack of clarity

According to Dorn, another possible factor is that there is evidence that the Russian troops were not clear about the type of mission they were facing.

“Everything indicates that the Russians told their troops that they were going to carry out exercises and then they have been caught by surprise in live fire. This has both a psychological and a tactical impact, because the forces were not fully prepared to do this type of thing, ”he indicates.

In this sense, Cafarella believes that the moral factor, a decisive element on the battlefield, may also be playing differently on the two sides.

“Part of what we’re seeing in Ukraine is just the unknown factor of what happens when two countries, two military forces, go to war,” he says.

“It appears that the Russians have a very serious morale problem because their forces did not expect to fight this war and were not mentally prepared for the scale of combat they were going to face. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are fighting for their homeland, so Ukrainian morale is very high, given that they have a clarity of purpose,” he adds.

The RUSI report indicates that there may be another major cause, despite the experience gained by part of the Russian air force during its foray into the war in Syria.

“While the early failure of the VKS to establish air superiority could be explained by a lack of early warning, coordination capabilities, and sufficient planning time, the continuing pattern of activity suggests a more significant conclusion: that the VKS lacks the institutional capacity to plan, report and fly complex large-scale air operations”, he indicates.

Ukraine’s response

Military experts agree that beyond the strategic mistakes that the Russian forces have made, a fundamental factor that has allowed the Ukrainians to maintain control over their airspace is the implementation of a creative tactic, which adapts to the limitations and circumstances.

Having a smaller air force, they have concentrated on punctual attacks and not large deployments, which has helped them channel their resources.

“Although it is much smaller, the Ukrainian army is professional and has very good weapons. They have also received training from NATO forces, including Canada and the United States,” says Dorn.

The military analyst points out that another fundamental factor is that, even before the conflict began, allied countries began sending military aid to Ukraine, including surface-to-air missiles, which have helped prevent Russia from achieving air supremacy.

The beginning of the invasion of Ukraine also led many Western countries to send military support to kyiv, including nations that had maintained a neutral status for years, such as Germany.

Military analyzes show that the Ukrainians have made strategic use of Turkish TB-2 drones and Raven reconnaissance drones, which have served not only for attacks against enemy ships, but also for forces on the ground.

Last Wednesday, US President Joe Biden announced that his country would allocate $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, including weapons such as drones that can turn into flying bombs and anti-aircraft weapons that can shoot helicopters out of the sky. .

However, control of airspace has also been a point of tension between Ukraine and the West.

Since the invasion began, the most frequent demand of the President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, to his Western allies has been the establishment of an air exclusion zone over his country, which would imply that NATO would have to shoot down the Russian planes that cross your airspace.

Poland’s attempt to deliver MiG-29 jets to Ukraine has also sparked friction between the United States and the European Union, fearing Russia would see the West as having gone too far in donating planes to kyiv.

Uncertain future

Analysts agree that the fact that Russia has not yet achieved air supremacy against Ukraine does not mean that it cannot do so in the coming days or weeks.

“The VKS may suddenly begin to mount complex, large-scale air operations comparable to those routinely conducted by NATO states and other modern air forces, such as Israel,” the RUSI report warns.

However, analysts like Dorn are more concerned that the lack of progress on the battlefield could lead Putin to make more desperate decisions, including the use of previously unused weaponry.

“At the beginning of the campaign Russia used many smart bombs (precision guided missiles), but now it mainly uses ‘dumb bombs’, which are less accurate and therefore severely increase civilian deaths (so-called ‘collateral damage’)”, it says.

“As well [su fuerza aérea] it flies higher in the air, to protect itself against ground fire, which means its missiles and bombs are less accurate,” he adds.

But, for the academic, one of the greatest risks is not only in these elements, but also in military reports and videos and photos that show what appears to be the use of Russian drones with autonomous capabilities (that is, they are designed to decide for themselves). themselves their targets of attack).

“The world has never seen autonomous weapon systems used on the battlefield before. This it is a technological advance, but a moral setback”, he thinks.

“Giving machines (drones) the ability to select targets means the introduction of airborne killer robots, something that needs to be stopped. If we allow computers and robots to make life and death decisions, then humanity as a whole is taking a step backwards,” he laments. (I)