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?
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 take would be they were getting the planes off the ground so that they weren’t destroyed.
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.
