Well, for one - with impunity, Russian choppers over the last month have decimated the Ukrainian counteroffensive attempts to the point of shocking even Western some observers (the uneducated ones). This is partially due to greatly degraded Ukrainian air defense after an intentional multi-month bombing campaign (using missiles, not planes - meaning no dead pilots). And Russia has shown to be very effective at intercepting various modern weapons systems via EW or direct. Maybe they are evil incarnate, but they math good.

No one's doubting Russia has built a capable defense over the last year however that's not changing the direction of the war.

How many helicopters can Russia sustain to lose? They've lost several over the last few weeks.

Supply routes have be successfully attacked by Ukraine with estimates of slowing logistics by 50% in certain areas.

And again how many AA batteries can they sustain to lose?

Meanwhile Ukraine has made slow but steady advances forward gaining ground.

Where's Russia changing the direction? Is that by terrorizing civilian targets (your bombing campaign) and blowing up hydroelectric dams? So essentially they're just using the tactics of terrorists.

Yet they still can't freely fly over Ukraine because they still lack control over the skies.

When's Russia regaining the momentum in their favor? Last week one of their best units tried to storm Moscow and hang their top military leaders.

AND now Russia is more weakened to a full confrontation with NATO than they were before starting their war in Ukraine. So all the more likely to lose air superiority to NATO+allies.

> And Russia has shown to be very effective at intercepting various modern weapons systems via EW or direct. Maybe they are evil incarnate, but they math good.

I dunno know about this part of the statement, the fact that we are still seeing long range deep strikes into important Russian territory (sometimes killing hundreds of soldiers at a time), tells me that maybe Russias EW and AA against semi modern cruise missiles isn't as good as people think.

That doesn’t mean they have full coverage. The “front” is enormous.

> That doesn’t mean they have full coverage. The “front” is enormous.

Yeah but these missile strikes have been hitting high value targets like air fields and troop barracks.

Regardless of if they can’t defend these areas because they don’t have the systems or the systems cannot intercept them it doesn’t bode well.