Russian Aircraft Losses In Ukraine - Debris from a military plane after it was shot down by Ukrainian forces in Chernihiv Credit: State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Russia cannot sustain its air losses for more than two weeks after at least nine planes were shot down in just 24 hours, analysts said.
Russian Aircraft Losses In Ukraine
Defense analysts said Moscow had been unable to establish air superiority because of its inability - at least so far - to launch "sophisticated" strikes that could overwhelm Ukraine's air force and the surface-to-air missile systems.
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Western officials were surprised by Russia's inability to win the battle in the air given its massive air advantage. Without air superiority, large convoys moving slowly on the ground can be picked off by Ukrainian drone strikes and shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles, supplied to Ukraine by the West.
Military strategists suggest that if Kiev, the capital, and Kharkiv, to the east, continue to resist the invasion, then Vladimir Putin's war effort will fail after "no more than three weeks" unless a major effort by replenishment is done.
"The Russians did not plan for a long war or make provisions to sustain it over time," said Professor Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London.
Russian military losses are cataloged by observers who rely only on visible and authentic images, such as a jet crash or a burning tank, posted on social media or recorded by journalists.
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Actual losses may be higher as a result, but verified photos and images show that 11 Russian planes, 11 helicopters and two drones have been downed since the invasion began 12 days ago, including nine over the weekend.
Among the Russian jets destroyed are at least four Su-34 fighter/bombers, four Su-25 ground attack fighters, two Su-30 fighters and nine attack helicopters. The economic cost is enormous, estimated at almost a quarter of a billion pounds just for the war plans.
Every day the war drags on is costing the Kremlin around £1 billion a day - catastrophic given how hard the sanctions are hitting Russia.
A US defense intelligence official said in a briefing that emerged overnight: "We continue to observe that the airspace over Ukraine is contested. The air and missile defense of the Ukraine remain effective and in use The Ukrainian military continues to fly aircraft and employ air defense assets.
Print Scale 72 457 Russian Air Force Losses In The 2022 Ukraine Invasion 1/72
"Both sides have taken losses in aircraft and missile defense inventories. We are not going to talk about numbers. We assess that both sides still have most of their air defense systems and capabilities" .
The numbers were cataloged by Stijn Mitzer, a conflict analyst, who published under the Twitter name Oryx and on a website of the same name. The website said: "This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment for which photographic or video evidence is available. Therefore, the number of destroyed equipment is significantly higher than recorded here."
The defense analyst said Ukraine has several fixed-wing fighters operating from airfields in the west of the country and surface-to-air missile sites, some mobile, that Russian forces do not have. able to identify and destroy.
The success of surface-to-air missile attacks has forced Russian jets to fly lower, giving them shelter from missile attacks, but leaving them vulnerable to attack by portable air defense systems - guided missiles.
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Justin Bronk, aviation researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, the UK's leading defense and security think tank, said: "The loss rate becomes unsustainable very quickly. If you keep the loss rate for a just a few weeks, it becomes unsustainable. a real problem for the Russians. They lost nine planes over the weekend. That's a lot."
He said Russian cruise missiles had been used to hit airfields at the start of the invasion, but that such weapons, while useful for targeting "fixed infrastructure, hard floors and crater runways," they were less effective at shooting down smaller targets such as fighter jets.
He suggested that runways could be repaired quickly and fighter jets removed from conflict zones in eastern Ukraine and redeployed to the west of the country ready for use. Ukraine had less than 100 fighters at the beginning of the war, and it is not clear what remains after days of conflict.
"Ukraine is still flying," said Mr. Bronk who added that the "continued absence" of major Russian-operated air operations raised "serious questions" about its capability.
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He said: "While the early failure of the VKS [Russian Air Force] to establish air superiority could be explained by a lack of early warning, coordination ability and sufficient planning time, the pattern of continued activity suggests a more significant - that VKS does not have the organizational capacity to plan, brief and fly complex air operations at scale".
He said that if Russia could conduct "complex air operations", Moscow should now achieve air superiority to hunt down Ukrainian surface-to-air missile sites.
After failing to exhaust Ukraine's leadership in the first days of the war, experts have warned that Russia is left with the prospect of a humiliating defeat or a continuation of the escalating violence.
In a statement on Monday, Moscow appeared to scale back its previous demands from Ukraine. A Kremlin spokesman said hostilities could end "in a moment" if Ukraine stopped fighting, amended its constitution to remove any possible future in NATO, recognized the loss of Crimea and recognized the zones separated in the east of the country.
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But defense experts said any prospect of defeat or a military stalemate - which would be seen as a tactical victory for Ukraine - could mean more violence in the coming days, especially against civilians.
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