Russia’s air defense has expanded, gives Ukraine more opportunities: experts

But because of Ukraine’s successful strikes and recent tactics, Russia must now decide where to put its air defenses.

And that gives Ukraine new opportunities to target weaker areas, war experts told Business Insider.

Russia’s defenses are being eroded

Last month, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said in their war update that Russia does not appear to have enough air defenses to protect everything it needs, even in supposedly secure areas.

George Barros, a Russian analyst at ISW, told BI that Russia has arranged its defenses to protect the areas that are most threatened, meaning other areas are then exposed.

If Ukraine can get past the first line of defense, then it can penetrate deeper into Russia, where the country is “not adequately protected,” he said.

Ukraine said it destroyed 59 Russian air defense systems in June, the second-highest monthly total in the war (after 73 in July 2023).

These figures are not independently confirmed and there is no objective figure for the number of Russian air defense systems that have been damaged or destroyed.

But Ukraine was seen destroying a number of systems, including many of Russia’s most advanced.

Ukraine hits Russia harder

Ukraine is forcing Russia to consider where to defend itself by hitting more and more Russian sites, experts said.

Western allies recently gave Ukraine permission to use their weapons to strike some military targets in Russia, whereas before this was limited only to targets on Russian-held territory in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also stepped up its drone campaign, striking airfields and oil facilities, sometimes hundreds of miles inside Russia.

Justin Bronk, UK airpower expert think tank Royal United Services Institute, said in June that Ukraine appeared to be pursuing a clear strategy to force the Russian air force “either to vacate its bases several hundred miles from Ukraine’s borders or to devote an inordinate amount of air defense systems to defend them. “

Last month’s ISW update said Ukraine’s increasing drone strikes had stretched Russia’s capabilities and that the attacks “continue to pressure Russia’s air defense umbrella and force the Russian military command to prioritize the allocation of limited defense assets airline to cover what they consider to be of high value. targets.”

He added that satellite images from May suggested Russia had concentrated some systems around Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in Valdai, Leningrad Region.

Riley Bailey, a Russia analyst at ISW, told BI that Ukraine’s escalating near-daily strikes are putting more pressure than ever on Russia’s military command.

Michael Clarke, a Russia and Ukraine expert at RUSI and King’s College London, who is also the UK’s national security adviser, said Russia never anticipated being in a war where drones would have as strong as in this one.

The head of Russia’s Tatarstan region said in April that Russian companies and local authorities must defend themselves against Ukrainian drone strikes instead of relying on state defense after targets in the region were hit.

ISW called it “a clear acknowledgment and warning of the failure of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) to defend Russian cities and critical infrastructure from Ukrainian drone strikes.”

Bailey said this is happening “because Russia doesn’t have enough assets to cover Western Russia on a large scale against these regular drone strikes.”

The problem is accentuated in Crimea

Ukraine specifically targeted Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

Bailey said Ukraine had conducted a “pretty consistent” campaign to target Russian air defenses in Crimea and strain Russia’s air defenses.

The UK Ministry of Defense said in April that the cumulative effect of Ukraine’s attacks on the peninsula’s defenses affected Russia’s ability to defend Crimean airspace.

Clarke, the Russia and Ukraine expert at RUSI and King’s College, said Ukraine had been “quite successful, particularly in Crimea, in destroying some of the Russian radars and anti-aircraft systems”.

He described Ukraine as attacking Russia’s air defense network “and then using the holes in the network that they created to go through and attack air bases or in some cases Sevastopol, the naval base.”

He also said that Russia’s defenses have become more stretched than ever because, with a static front line, Ukraine has increasingly focused on striking into Russia’s occupied territories and into Russia itself.

Ukraine’s repeated strikes have led to reports that the Russian military has had to constantly move systems from Crimea, making it more difficult to continue using the peninsula as a military logistics hub and staging post, Bailey said.

And Ukraine’s attacks elsewhere in Russia appear to complicate Russia’s presence in Crimea.

The Ukrainian partisan group ATESH said in June that Russia had moved its defenses from the peninsula to Russia’s Belgorod region, where it was attacking Ukraine.

It’s an air defense war

Analysts point to the current conflict as one that has largely become a war of air defense – and one in which Russia still holds the upper hand.

Air defense of Ukraine they are much smaller and the equipment is often reduced.

Meanwhile, Russia’s air defense arsenal remains formidable.

Ukraine is also at a disadvantage, war experts said, because the US will not let it use the long-range weapons it has given it to strike deep into Russia, where Russia keeps many of the aircraft which it uses to launch attacks on Ukraine.

Getting this permission and more planes would create a more level playing field.

And being able to hit more targets in Russia would allow Ukraine to stop more attacks at the source — likely forcing Russia to make even more decisions about where to put its air defenses and what areas to leave vulnerable to attack Ukrainian.