The issue I think is more about doctrine.
If you ask me, as a standalone question, Whether Russian Air Force is a competent force? The answer would be yes.
The issue here is not whether or not RuAF have the edge, they always have the edge, the problem here is how the Russian command apply said edge into the battlefield, if this was the us, we would have a combine strike force to capture Antonov Airport, covered by CAS and Airborne artillery, we would have use the air power as an arm of the combine arms attack, but Russian, on the other hand, used its airpower as infantry support. That's the big different here.