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The blood sigil is @Dean. What existential corner is air defense supposed to keep Russia out of?
The reason an air defense loss isn't itslef existential threat is because air campaign alone aren't existential unless they are done by nukes. Airpower alone doesn't displace governments or destroy the ability for organized (if dispersed) light infantry. Leader might die earlier than they otherwise would, vehicle may blow up but the governments tend to remain unless there is a separate ground force that can physically displace a government's army. Without that external ground army moving in, for which your own ground army is just one way to mitigate, there isn't an existential threat to the nation-state unless you conflate the dead leader (mortal as they are) with the state.
Russia would not be in an existential risk state without air defense because it has second strike nuclear capability in multiple forms. It does not need air defenses any more than it needs buffer states to make an existential invasion threat a non-viable option for a foreign invader. The best nuclear deterrence survival strategies, in turn, don't rely on active air defenses or standoff distance, but passive measures such as denial, deception, redundancy, mobility, and of course hiding.
What Russia depended on air defenses for is the viability of a regional dominance strategy that depends on armored columns that airpower could otherwise easily destroy. But for air defense, the russian invasion wouldn't be credible, and Russian threats could be more easily ignored.
The ability of Russia's smaller neighbors who cannot / would not invade Russia outright ignoring Russian threats would certainly be an existential threat to Russia's self-image as a great power deserving deference, but this is a self-image existence, not a national existence risk. Self-image, like heads of government, can easily be replaced.
@VoxelVexillologist since they were the nominal subject of the reply.
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