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Taking of airports can be either to bring in your own planes, or cripple the defending country’s access supplies into the region.
Practically the number 1 part of infrastructure to take and control.
They are not being destroyed as building new ones is time consuming and expensive. Could easily just shell/bomb them and render them unusable, but they are strategically useful for both sides.
Acliff
Dibble
is he minimising civilian casualties whilst making as much noise as possible hence Chernobyl, the only place in Ukraine most people have heard of.
Counterintuitively pummelling built up areas makes them more difficult to fight through.
He isn’t short of tanks in theatre if he had one posing near Chernobyl with a BMP .
Not sure why he has taken Antonov airport as he knows Lithuania have given Ukraine Stinger missiles and you would have to be deranged to fly in troop transports. Russia may think they have learnt to counter Stinger since Afganistan.
Maybe recent Russian experience with Turkish UAVs has made them rethink shock tactics