This sounds pretty significant but I’m dumb. Does this mean that they consider the airport too dangerous to base their military aircraft now or is it something else?
My take would be they were getting the planes off the ground so that they weren’t destroyed.
There’s a lot of potential explanations: Evacuation of VIPs, lack of confidence in airport security, the necessary transit of defenders, chickens running around without their heads, etc.
Personally I think the most straightforward conclusion is that the russians were fleeing in a chaotic panic, which isn’t an entirely unexpected response when you’re subject to a surprise attack.
My theory is that a certain number of government officials come and go from Moscow every day - however the Moscow airport has been under constant drone bombardment for at least a week. This is like 7 days worth of government officials going “We’ll all leave at the next break in the bombing” and then all flying out at the same time.
