Why does Russia wait for a provocation to happen in order to destroy these targets?
Still going with the soft approach.
The Russians have always been more reactive than active, at least since the beginning of the invasion. For example, the low effectives factor and the problems arising from it began to be visible even under the direction of Aleksandr Dvornikov who took a good part of the attrition war against the AFU. They spent months in a war of attrition keeping the rules of engagement of an SMO with a low manpower and still decreasing the number of troops across the more than 1,000 km of frontline because of rotation. As much as the troops are professional and experienced, achieving success in an extremely long front line with low manpower is a very difficult task, you can't have consistency across the front line, you can't hit the entire front line with low effectives, besides, you can't keep the effective forever on the front line, you need to retract, rest, recompose yourself, assimilate reserves, among other things.
The Americans faced the same problem in Vietnam, when they invaded, they started with few troops and the number of troops on the ground grew and reached half a million at the peak, in Iraq the same thing - David Petraeus asked for an increase in troops, in Afghanistan the same thing, General Stanley McChrystal even calling for an abysmal increase in troops in Afghanistan "to solve the problem". It's a recurring error. The Russians decided to do this when they were expelled from Kharkiv.
Another mistake that is being corrected is not attacking Ukrainian logistics centers. Bridges, railways, power generation centers, C2 centers, that changed when the Crimean bridge was attacked by the Ukrainians.
It is the Russian attempt to put the lock after the door has already been breached.
Another situation is that of NATO's ISR assets providing and transmitting real-time information to the AFU. Think about Moskva, death of generals, the recent case of the attack on Sevastopol among many other embarrassing situations that Russians go through, it ends up being a huge mistake to let these assets operate freely, in tactical terms, this is a huge mistake. Personnel may claim that these assets are in international airspace, but they are in a hostile attitude towards Russia. There are two cases of countries that solved this by ending the problem:
Iran -
The US claims it was in international airspace, while Iran claims it was in national airspace.
North Korea -
The incident took place in disputed waters. North Korea denies to this day that it sank, but indications point out that it really was North Korea.
These two countries above do not bluff. If you have to take it down, they take it down. The Russians since the incident of the Type 45 that passed near the Crimea and moved away under bomb and fire from the Russians gave an indication of that same active positioning of action, but now they do nothing about NATO ISR assets.
Now, this stuff is interesting:
Usually people think only of the Francis Gary Powers case, but there are dozens of other similar cases.
Returning to Russia, Ukraine and NATO. If Russia overthrows it, can it cause world war? Probably yes. But it's a mistake for Russia to do nothing about it, if it can't take down, at least antagonize, the incident of the missile firing at the RC-135 is a good way to do that, only now they're escorted by fighter jets after that. .
