Normally you would think an invading army would prioritize three things:
1. Destroy the country's airforce.
2. Destroy the country's air defence systems.
3. Cut off all reinforcement routes.
This is not rocket science and even an armchair general like me knows this.
Russia has been planning this attack for years and surely had the satellite imagery and intelligence network to know where every single Ukrainian aircraft was on the night of the invasion.
Russia certainly had the military capability to blitzkrieg #1 and #3, i.e. destroy the entire Ukrainian airforce within hours and to bomb out every paved road into the country from the rest of Europe. Destroying the Ukrainian air defence system (#2) could then be done leisurely once European reinforcements were denied.
So why didn't Russia do this?
Ukraine simply had really a lot of SAMs like any ex-USSR country.
And they know they don't have advanced antiradiation missiles which can bypass "anti-HARM" radar modulation which every late USSR SAM has.
On top of that, Ukrainians apparently been training exactly for such scenario of preserving SAMs under enemy SEAD. Their SAMs are alway moving in the rear. The caught off S300 TEL near Mikolayevsk is a proof of that.
Last edited: