Relevant quote from the report (the entire report seems extremely worth reading):
A critical weakness of the Russian strike campaign was battle damage assessment. First, the
Russian military appears to have presumed that if an action had been ordered and carried out
then it had succeeded, unless there was direct evidence to the contrary. Evidence of success
appears to have disproportionately relied on three data points: confirmation from pilots that
they hit their target; confirmation from Russian satellites that a site showed damage; and
confirmation from signals intelligence (SIGINT) that Ukrainians reported a strike and damage
to their equipment. Russian satellite reconnaissance proved very limited, even though Russian
survey space reconnaissance of Ukraine has been conducted since at least 2012, and detailed
reconnaissance, in the interests of invasion planning, since mid-2021. A probable reason for
this may be the insufficient number of satellites in the orbital grouping of the VKS and the
overestimation of their technical capabilities. Indirect confirmation of this explanation is
provided by the fact that the AFRF began buying additional satellite images of the territory of
Ukraine and individual military facilities on the world market in April 2022. One of the visible
failures of satellite intelligence is the inability to detect on time a significant volume of strategic
railway movements by the UAF, which, in March 2022 amounted to three–four echelons per day.
The poor Russian battle damage assessment process made the Russian military highly vulnerable
to deception, which has been consistent throughout the conflict. Early strikes on Ukrainian
airfields, for example, destroyed many hangars. By photographing this damage and printing the
resulting pattern on to sheets, it became possible to clear the rubble and erect covers for aircraft
to return to the site, sheltering in positions that the Russians would confirm as destroyed. This
led – somewhat amusingly – to the Russians debating whether Ukrainian fighter aircraft were
operating from subterranean shelters at several sites. Repeated strikes on dummy air-defence
positions also saw a considerable wastage of ammunition, while Ukrainian troops could confirm
that sites were destroyed over the radio even when they were still functioning, causing Russian
aircraft to ignore air-defence systems in their mission planning. The already-publicly reported
use of dummy HIMARS (high mobility artillery rocket system) later in the war to lure Russian
fires is indicative of the systematic use of deception to ensure survivability by the UAF, and it
has proven widely effective.
The presumption of success caused the Russian military to take several unjustifiable risks in the
disposition of its forces during the first 72 hours of the conflict. Aircraft did not fly with EW pods
during the opening phase as they were not deemed necessary following the presumed success
of the strike campaign. Similarly, Russian manoeuvre forces were not properly supported by
air-defence units and Russian air-defence units were told to presume that aircraft were friendly.
This enabled a significant number of ground-attack sorties by the Ukrainian Air Force, including
using UAVs such as TB2, against Russian formations, even when they had attached air-defence
units. Ukraine suffered aircraft losses in air-to-air engagements, however.