Just because the US is in love with 'Shock and Awe' doesn't mean everyone else sees it as the appropriate methodology in all circumstances.
1) They do not believe they can, so are not trying.
2) They believe they could, but are choosing not to.
3) They tried, but, for some reason that's not currently clear and isn't evident in battlefield losses, failed. (this is probably the least likely and also the most grave—it suggests severe problems with their command structure)
Whichever's the case, it's a real head-scratcher and is the main reason this isn't going how most folks thought it would.
This is what my money is on.
Sending ground forces in without establishing air superiority is ludicrous, for reasons that we are seeing now. I guess we have a good idea where the military coup will originate.
With Europe closing its airspace there aren't many valid approach paths into Ukraine, or ways to get out of Ukraine should things go south. Russia has few stealth aircraft. In the 1991 gulf war, 60's era Soviet SA-2 missiles were able to defend Baghdad against non-stealth aircraft despite weeks of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses(SEAD) strikes.
A MIG-29 costs ~20 million dollars new.
Europe only contacts the western border. Russian aircraft can approach from the north (Russia and Belarus), south (Black Sea) and east (Russia).
That being said however stealth aircraft are not cheap to maintain at all.
In reality it appears that Russia had a big problem with "ghost units" and rapidly tried to fill their invasion force with conscripts in the weeks before the invasion began. It's why we're seeing so many ill-equipped soldiers and awful tactics where tanks/APCs are driving solo through fields.
My guess is that they have, correctly, anticipated that mass casualties of white civilians would play very badly internationally and domestically.
e: I'm downvoted.. for what? It's obvious that the ethnicity of the victim matters for both domestic and international perception, all you need to do is look at a bit of media coverage of reporters bemoaning that this is happening to "blue eyed, blond haired" people or in the "civilized world." There is a different standard for what sort of casualties are considered acceptable.
Just because a talking head or two makes those claims does not mean it is all of the sudden the truth. If Russia was worried about the looks of white civilian casualties, they wouldn't have invaded Ukraine. By the way, how many news reporters didn't make the claim that people only care about this because blue eyed/blonde haired people are involved?
Maybe Westerners care more about the Ukrainian situation because Ukraine was by and large a peaceful, lawful country until the war started. Do you think the western response would have been a little different if there was a pre-existing civil war in Ukraine, and Russia stepped in to try to turn the tide for one of the factions?
Also do tell what was the existing civil war in Iraq?
The guardian had an article about some of the comments made by journalist and politicians and there is no other way then to say they are racist.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/civili...
If Westerners only care about blonde hair blue eyed people, why did no one care about the Ukrainian war before 2 weeks ago?
Your link has, I think, 4 people who make a claim about why the West cares about the war. Is there a reason you put so much weight on those 4 people, but not on the thousands of other journalists covering the situation who aren't making those claims? Did you know a single one of those people before hearing their coverage of the war?
I assume that Russia doesn't want the same result in a neighbouring country.
"That would have been "the logical and widely anticipated next step, as seen in almost every military conflict since 1938," wrote the RUSI think-tank in London"
The US may just as well have dropped 10 more nukes and it wouldn't have changed anything. The Japanese didn't care whether it took a 1.000 bombs to destroy a city or a single one. Even more so, since they didn't know anything about the radioactive fallout and long-term effects. To them, it was just a bigger bomb.
It's noted that it's not clear how much the atomic bombings influenced the decision to surrender, versus the near-simultaneous declaration of war by the USSR on Japan. Furthermore, by the time Japan surrendered, it was clear that Japan had already thoroughly lost. Recall that similar bombing campaigns against the UK (Battle of Britain) and Germany utter failed to bring those nations any closer to surrender.
In any case, compared to the actual theorists like Giulio Douhet who were, before World War II, arguing that attacking cities would cause the will of the nations to collapse before they fully mobilized, the actual results fell far short of the theorists.
My understanding is that communications between Hirohito and Stalin indicate that Japan was attempting to begin negotiation of a total surrender after Midway and that Truman's diary eludes to this moment. The main argument I've seen to contradict this is that they don't believe Japan wasn't actually going to accept a full surrender at this point.