Regardless of what you or the NYT thinks of Russia’s aviation performance, they do fly hundreds of sorties every day. They attack Ukraine forces by air and apparently successfully.
As to the comment regarding “Putin’s failure to build a capable modern air force” it is true that U.S. aviation forces are better than Russia’s according to some military experts. But, those same experts judge Russia as superior to the U.S. in artillery warfare.
Russia is fighting a U.S. trained and equipped to “NATO standards” army on the enemy’s territory and they are without any doubt, winning.
Because they are fighting a “special military operation” and not a full scale war they have only brought 15% of their artillery capability to the battle field and without their latest and best equipment (except in a few cases of beta testing the new technology.)
They have to date avoided any full mobilization of their forces because Putin says they don’t need it.
“Regardless of what you or the NYT thinks of Russia’s aviation performance...”
Hey now, you cited them as a source. You can’t very well reject them now that I point out they contradict the picture you want to paint. I’d just suggest you be more careful picking your sources next time.
” they do fly hundreds of sorties every day”
Sorties that skirt the borders of Ukraine because they will get shot down if they go much further, since they DO NOT have air superiority.
“they are without any doubt, winning”
Well, I, for one, doubt it.
“Because they are fighting a “special military operation” and not a full scale war they have only brought 15% of their artillery capability to the battle field...”
You say it’s because of their mealy-mouthed excuse of “not fighting a real war”, but I say it’s more likely because either most of their artillery is in a poor state or repair, or because they are afraid of losing it, since a lot of the equipment they brought into Ukraine has either been destroyed or abandoned.