not sure about the Russian Air Force, but from a ground perspective. The reason behind the downfall of Russian Military might is corruption.
Saw a Pentagon auditor report on Russian ground vehicle. Most of their tire are cheap Chinese Brand. It's nothing wrong with Cheap Chinese Brand, if you maintain it frequently, but then they didn't. Which mean they are overpressure, and started to flake, all those tires got blown up suggest widespread corruption within the rank of Russian Military.
Why? If you want to "Cheap Skate" your equipment and take that cut, you wouldn't go cheap skate important stuff, like the weapon system or armour. But you would cheap skate item such as Engine Oil, Tires, Transmission and so on. The thing is, if you cut corner on weapon system and armour, that can be spotted miles away, tires and transmission is hard to spot, this is where these people will take a cut there and cut corner. I mean, $40,000 for 8 APC Tires and if you are using $20,000 Chinese brand, you pocket $20,000 just 1 APC, think about Russia have around 5000 or more of those, how much money we are talking about?
I don't really know enough on the Air Force to comment on it, but I would assume they will have similar problem with the ground force.
Arming Ukrainian is NOT an escalation, Sweden wasn't in NATO either, so what compel the Swede to send NLAW and AT-4? when are Russia going to send some ICBM Swedish way?
Again, you are funny, sending ICBM to some country is NOT an escalation, while sending arms to another country in a hot war is?? I really want to know if you know anything about Logic??