From your own source:
“Russian planes, pilots and air-to-ground weapons have all grossly underperformed in the war against Ukraine.
The absence underscored President Vladimir V. Putin’s failure to build a capable modern air force, as Russian aircrews race in and out of Ukrainian airspace and heave unguided bombs while fleeing enemy surface-to-air missiles that Moscow has still not managed to destroy, even after 75 days of combat.”
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.