By the way, the Ukrainians reportedly have a fairly large number of SU-25′s in service (90) as well as more than 20 in storage. I would be surprised if some of those aircraft were not enroute to Georgia. Others are in storage in places such as the Czech Republic. And of course there may even be some surviving in Iraq.

Interestingly enough, after the fall of the USSR, some of the former republics found themselves with strategic bombers, including the Backfire supersonic bomber.

And they wanted no part of them. Russia refused to take them back, and at least one country (either Kazahastan or Ukraine, I think) invited the USAF in to destroy them. This was done by ground teams rather than airstrikes.

I have often thought that a more Machivellian approach would have seen the bombers go elsewhere, preferably quietly. Israel, perhaps. Or Georgia.

But we were at the end of history then and weren’t gonna study war no more. Besides, bombers that size are a bit difficult to hide and offer no plausible deniability in terms of them being airliners or crop dusters.