I was gonna say, I’m pretty sure azov never actually disbanded they were just incorporated into the Ukrainian military.

Partially because they can’t push without a mass mobilization, which puts the popularity of the war (which is popular to the majority of Russians, at least at the moment) in jeopardy, partially because any kind of offensive, even an overwhelming one, is an extremely risky gamble, that even if successful will lead to the death of tens of thousands, partially because much like for the West, Ukraine at this point is a testing ground for modern military tech and tactics, which Russia can then use to improve their military capabilities for any potential outright conflict with NATO, and partially because spooking the Europeans into outright mobilization, as opposed to trickling in their mentally ill and ideologically motivated, isn’t really on the Russian to-do list, they would rather go back to trading with them, even if that will never happen.

Mostly however, it is because it doesn’t as actually affect anything anymore, particularly those in the Russian oligarchy. It’s like the same reason we won’t stop fighting wars, they do not affect those in charge. There was a short period of time when that wasn’t true, when Ukraine had a military force that could contest Russia and threaten their government, but that likely hasn’t been the case anymore for over a year now. Better to keep the front lines open, minimize having to deal with outright partisians.

We’ll see if it works out for them, if it becomes more like an infected wound as opposed to a quarantine.

Ukrainian strikes don’t actually accomplish much, as the above article itself mentions, and Russia’s running a far larger and far more successful (as in, hitting actual targets and not civilians) strike campaign on Ukraine. it just doesn’t get as much coverage.

There isn’t necessarily that much punch-pulling going on, unless you believe Russia should just adopt American tactics and start razing entire cities to the ground. Currently, the casualties they’re inflicting on Ukraine are so severe as to be functionally tantamount to genocide - this is not meant as a critique of Russia, but rather the Ukrainian government for just deciding to feed their entire male population into a meat grinder with no concern for the future, but at the end of the day, the effects of this amount of people dying, whether as combatants or civilians, aren’t that different. Demographic collapse in post-war Ukraine is basically already baked in, and every month this drags on further, the post-war scenario becomes worse and worse. There aren’t a lot of moves for Russia to make beyond “just do more genocide” - they did the strike campaign on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and did that deter the Ukrainian government? Well, no, so the only thing left to do is to just finish it off and let all of Ukraine freeze to death next winter, I guess? They’re hitting Ukrainian logistics to the point that soldiers on the frontline are starting to starve. They’ve devastated the Ukrainian economy, but there’s still money coming in from the West (without which Ukraine wouldn’t be able to do fundamental things like pay government employees, let alone prosecute a war - and the government is already screwing people out of pay, by for example keeping a lot of soldiers officially as missing-in-action rather than killed so they don’t have to pony up for pensions to the families). They’re constantly hitting Ukrainian industry, but equipment keeps coming in from the West - Ukraine’s borders are vast enough that effectively stopping all supply isn’t really viable, and Russia throwing a ton of Oreshniks at industrial sites throughout Europe, while it would be pretty cool, isn’t necessarily the wisest move in the long term. The Ukrainians have also openly bragged about assembling drones in civilian apartments - so there’s no way to actually shut that production down without, again, razing the country to the ground and carrying out an actual American-style genocide-by-air.

And as for stopping these attacks specifically - the simple reality is that there is no 100% counter to drone and missile strikes - you can’t intercept everything, and you can’t fully suppress the enemy’s ability to launch them. The Iran war should have been a pretty thorough demonstration of this - the US and Israel had some of the most advanced air defense systems around, and yet still took a ton of hits. They ran a very extensive air interdiction campaign, and yet seemingly didn’t degrade Iranian missile capability in any meaningful manner. The same advantages that Iran enjoyed against the American air campaign that we get hyped up about, are also ones that Ukraine has against Russia (to a lesser extent since it’s not such a mountainous country, but there’s still plenty of forests and tiny villages to hide out in, and the Russian airforce isn’t anywhere near as big, so it kind of evens out), and that’s something we just have to accept - technological developments don’t get to only benefit the guys we like and do nothing for the other guys. That war and the broader Middle Eastern conflicts involving Israel are relevant for another reason too - one of the main “taking the gloves off” moves pro-Russian commentators are constantly going on about is striking decision making centers, and yet we have a thorough demonstration of several years of the Israelis doing exactly that, only to end up with Iran and Hezbollah still standing and fighting them. So, no, decapitation strikes are not some magical kung fu technique that disables the enemy.

This is just the nature of modern war - you’re going to get hit. The post-WW1 “bomber will always get through” theory was false at the time, because in reality the aircraft technology of the period couldn’t really facilitate that - but now, the technology of drones and missiles has gotten to the point where they will actually always get through. In a modern war, against a country of sufficient size and economic development, you’re going to be bombed - if the US, the country which led the way on air interdiction and developed an entire doctrine around it, didn’t manage to successfully run an interdiction campaign against Iran, then no-one’s going to be able to, except maybe China in some years. It’s just the material reality - Western military commentators are the ones deluding themselves that there’s some magical tech widget they could invent to prevent this, but it would behoove us to not fall into that same pattern. They were the ones who spent several years going “well, drones don’t actually change the game in a war against a real country (read: “not slavic”), since our superior airforce would just bomb out the enemy’s ability to launch drones!” - and, well, the US tried that, and failed thoroughly. There’s no magical solution, you just have to accept that you’re going to get bombed, and build up the capacity to bomb the enemy even more.