You cannot fight a summer offensive when you have 100km long gaps in your air defenses, period, end of story. If russia tries it will just destroy them faster.
Frankly it is kind of hilarious that the international media thinks there will be.
An air defense gap like this is a bigger problem than just the missing gap itself, it makes russia trying to locate and plug gaps elsewhere in their air defense network by working backwards from Ukraine strikes an impossible task because maybe all the drones came from that huge air defense gap? Or maybe they exploited another route russia isn’t aware is not adequately defended?
The uncertainty snowballs quick.
An air war like this is fundamentally about destroying your enemies assets faster than they can produce them, while building your own assets faster than they’re destroyed. If one part gets an upper hand in that balance, it will inherently snowball quickly, since that party is getting more assets for each day, while the enemy has fewer assets for each day. The most crucial component here is probably your manufacturing capacity for weapons systems.
Of course, it takes a lot of time for this to materialise when russia has had so deep stores of weapons. Hopefully, we’re seeing a long-term effect of Ukraine having a larger manufacturing capacity for air defence assets than russia. If they actually have that, it’s also because their manufacturing capacity has grown very fast, which means the discrepancy will only increase. The tipping point is when Ukraine is both manufacturing air defence capabilities faster than russia, and are increasing their manufacturing capacity faster.