It annihilated the VDV.

And? It also took out a useful aircraft which could have been more significant over the war.

Or, airborne in name only nowadays.

No, but them taking and holding the airport close to Ukraine's seat of government would have done a lot.

Now you’re assuming quite a bit more than just a handful of troupes surviving. Such as them being able to get to an airport when there’s air defenses in the way. Being able to reinforce those troupes quickly again through air defenses etc.

Within a narrative such as loss of elite troops would definitely have some serious impact. In the context of a war the loss of the aircraft could easily be more significant.

The videos of the Russian troops at Hostomel are on Youtube. As a commenter above mentioned, they were there to allow troop transports to land and eventually be connected to the tank column coming south from Belarus.

Sure that was a plan, but it turns such movements of tanks proved very detrimental to Russia.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking if only X, but war is complicated. It’s possible Russia would have been worse off because they tried to use those VDV soldiers in a plan that disastrously failed. It’s slightly more likely that they would have been a small net benefit, but chances are things would look more or less identical today with or without them.

My guy, the dismissive tone of "it's not an action movie" while backpedaling to "tut tut, sure that might have been their specific plan but have you considered unintended consequences" is too much for me.

I’m sorry if reality is too much for you.

Saying doing X wouldn’t have mattered is a perfectly reasonable rebuttal here. Ukraine not using a missile for attacking that aircraft means they could have used it to attack a different aircraft. Similarly Russia got to use all forces in that plan not destroyed with the aircraft in some other plan.

That’s not backpedaling that’s just the inherent complexities involved.

Have a good day.

Sure, have a good day.