that is the key point. Turkey mastered how to use drones to kill Pantsir-S1 in Syria, and immediately applied that in Libya and Azerbaijan with great success. Pantsir-S1 - the first were brought to Donbass in August 2014 with the tank battalions which hit near Ilovaysk - is what caused Ukraine to stop using air force in Donbass. With Pantsir-S1 advantage removed, the tank-based Russian forces there would become much easy to deal with for Ukrainian air force and especially for the high-precision munition what is used from the Turkish drones.
>modern jets
Russia is really far from sending airforce there, while Ukraine doesn't have much barriers for allowing the F-16 to fight there - as result the F-16s will appear there earlier thus putting Russia in the position of the one escalating conflict if Russia decides to bring the airforce. And if Russia does decide to send the planes in the outcome is far from obvious- while F-16 is older and worse in direct dogfight than the modern Russian planes it isn't that important as for the last 40 years USSR/Russian planes were mostly shot down from stand-off distance where NATO weaponry and situation awareness is better.
Pantsir is not even an IADS. It is at its core 50 year old technology. S300 and S400 are fundamentally different and an order of magnitude more dangerous, they are real air defence systems.
The F-16 would have no situational awareness advantage. It would be without any AWACS and the Russian jets would be networked into the S400 system and sharing data. They would have the clear and obvious situational awareness advantage.
And this is only if Turkey is willing to fight the Russian airforce. So far even in Syria Turkey has not dated to do so, there is no chance Turkey will dare to do so that close to Russia.
it is a very effective system against 4th gen at the close range. As a result one has to use high-precision stand-off weapons in the presence of Pantsir . Ukraine doesn't have such weapons, and this is why Russian tanks operated so freely there. Turkey does have it and is using those weapons from the drones - that is how they have been so effectively taking out Pantsirs and Russian made armor in all those places recently.
Russia isn't going to deploy S-300/400 class of the systems in Donbass. There is pretty specific parameter envelope for fighting there without escalating it to the next level. Neither side has interest in doing so, at least currently. That also basically makes Russian jets non-participants there.
>there is no chance Turkey will dare to do so that close to Russia.
That is the point here that Ukraine is that chance for Turkey to get that close without officially fighting Russia, only supposedly helping Ukraine on its official territory like they did in Azerbaijan (and like Russia did in Syria - right near the Turkey btw, and, similar to Russia in Syria, Turkey can bring a lot into Ukraine, including AWACS - i think it is Ukrainians who may be not ready for that level of Turkish involvement - i mean for example my great-grandfather, a peasant from Kiev region, fought in the Russo-Ottoman war just 144 years ago and the historic memory of Ottoman rule and power projection in the Black Sea region is still alive). It isn't an open frontal war, it is more like a power- and kind of chess pieces moving play. No country wants to be slotted into a very disadvantageous position of an open aggressor - thus officially there is no Russia in Donbass and this is why it can't send S-300/400 there - and the play is to move as far and as aggressively as possible without being slotted that way.
>And this is only if Turkey is willing to fight the Russian airforce. So far even in Syria Turkey has not dated to do so
actually Turkey did it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo... . It was pretty clear demonstration of force. Russia didn't dare to respond in kind - that would be a major escalation Russia couldn't sustain as among other factors the number of Russian planes in Syria, and especially modern planes capable of dealing with F-16s, is miniscule.
Ukraine has to modernize army (including anti-air), stabilize economy (around 3% year to year growth prior to COVID). With each year more and more people understand that Russia is, unite against aggressor. It forces our government to implement much needed reforms. Meanwhile Russia economy is crumbling. All we need is time.
Unfortunately question today is not about deoccupation, but about preserving our freedom and sovereignty.
Turkey never fought Russia in Syria. They fought Assad's government with some help from Russian irregulars, even then they got stalled and recently had losses. Russia was however unwilling to escalate and there were no air battles, for example.