Why is Ukraine shooting down so many Russian aiircraft lately?

Risky decisions on both sides

I have been asked this question by a number of people, and its a fair question. While Ukraine has shot down hundreds of Russian aircraft during this war, of late it seems to have been successful at shooting down more high value targets.

Why this apparent sudden change? Well it goes back to fairly risky decisions on both sides due to the paralysis of the US government.

Russia started a new offensive last fall, with the aim of capturing a number of goals on the Eastern front ahead of Putin’s “reelection” this March. The stupidity of the US failing to pass the Ukraine Military Aid package has resulted in a catastrophic lack of ammunition at exactly the wrong time. Russia pressed its sudden ability to dominate the artillery war and after two years of trying unsuccessfully, were able to finally capture Avdiivka.

Map of the Eastern Front — Courtesy Map Russo-Ukraine War

The absolutely criminal action of the Republicans to continue to hold up this funding for months has handed the Russians a golden opportunity and they have decided to press on with a major offensive along the Eastern front. In order to support this offensive, because their artillery is already operating full capacity They ordered the Russian Air Force to drastically increase the number of sorties to suppress Ukrainian defenders during their assaults. This was quite a risk, mitigated only by their ability to cover the entire airspace with their AWACS.

Ukraine had a fairly risky plan of their own to counter this. They secretly relocated surface to air missile systems (SAMS) such as Patriot and NASAMS and also reportedly obsolete Soviet era S-200s (modified to extend their range) closer to the front.

The obselete Soviet S-200 SAM system

In this way they were able to shoot down two of Russia’s A-50 advanced AWACS. This added to a third damaged on the tarmac back in December resulted in Russia grounding the remaining A-50s in fear they might lose all of them.

The Russians however decided to press on with their offensive, hoping to overwhelm the Ukrainians before the US came to its senses and realized the damage it had done to its reputation world wide.

The Russians, victims as always of their own propaganda believed they would be able to overwhelm any Ukrainian SAM defenses with anti-radiation missiles. And most probably some of the Ukrainian SAM systems or their radars have been destroyed. But Russia also lost 12 high end SU-34s and SU-35s to Ukrainian Patriot and NASAM systems during February and another two on March 1st and 2nd.

The results of course have been nothing short of a staggering loss for Russia. Over this past weekend Russian airstrikes dropped by 60% throughout the front, indicating that Russia may finally realize it is throwing away a vital resource in aircraft and pilots that it isn’t in a position to replace.

It looks like for the moment Russia has lost its appetite to absorb the losses they have suffered in airpower in order to support their offensive. Both sides ran quite a risk and it appears, at this juncture Ukraine has prevailed. But it was a very close run thing and could still develop into a real Russian breakthrough.

All due to stupidity, incompetence and base politics in the US.

That’s it for today folks, how did you enjoy this article?