Paywall.
You’d think it would be easy. Russia’s next door. But the Ukraine has western(US) anti-aircraft weapons. More sophisticated than we know. Russia’s not stupid unless you account for the invasion.
Then there’s Afghanistan. Didn’t they learn from that? We didn’t.
For that reason alone we should hope they continue to pay a high price for their stupidity. Putin’s threat to up the ante should not scare us. It should scare their lieutenants as their families could easily be tracked down.
And it appears that Russia is unwilling to commit stealth aircraft (if they actually have any) and are incapable of precision targeting of Ukraine’s air defenses.