Ndege zimekua zinadunguliwa kila ikijichomoza moja, sasa hivi imekua hatari kupaa kwenye anga za Ukraine na imesababisha wana anga wa nchi hiyo kujitazamia kwenye TV kama mechi vile....
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Ukrainian troops are on the move—rolling along wide highways and across open fields as they counterattack in eastern and southern Ukraine.
They’re out in the open in broad daylight. They should be easy targets for the Russian air force’s hundreds of modern fighter-bombers.
But the Russian air force is missing in action. It has made no meaningful effort to halt the twin Ukrainian counteroffensives that kicked off on Aug. 30 in the south and eight days later in the east.
It’s not hard to explain the Russian warplanes’ absence. Russia’s old-fashioned air-war doctrine can’t keep up with a fast-changing battlefield. And the Ukrainian army and air force, against all odds, still are mounting a stiff defense of the air space over the front lines.
Befuddled by the chaos on the ground and harried by Ukrainian missiles and guns, Russian pilots mostly are sitting out the current campaign.
The Ukrainian brigades fighting their way south toward Russian-occupied Kherson and east across Kharkiv Oblast should have been sitting ducks. The southern front with its wide, treeless fields and numerous, difficult-to-cross rivers is famously favorable for attack pilots hunting enemy tanks.
The eastern front for its part is heavily forested in places, which forces mechanized units to stick to roads if they hope to move fast. But well-marked roads risk channeling troops into aerial ambushes.
All that is to say, the Russian air force—as well as the aerial arm of the Russian navy—had opportunities to hit the Ukrainians at their most critical moments: in the early hours of each counteroffensive, as brigades and battalions concentrated their vehicles then rolled forward in careful sequence.
But they didn’t.
MSN
