They can just bomb large areas like they did in Mariupol, given apparently they care nothing about civilian casualties or committing war crimes. From the other article I linked, the reason they have been able to do that largely unopposed in southern Ukraine is because Ukraine does not have their mid/high altitude air defenses there (instead have them to defend key areas like Kyiv and Kharkiv). Russia has been able to adjust their air operations to keep out of the range of MANPADs.
Russian air force action increases despite flood of antiaircraft missiles into Ukraine
You can see from the confirmed list of fixed wing aircraft destroyed or damaged, that other than one or two from mid March, pretty much all of them were from earlier in the war (early March or in February).
Attack On Europe: Documenting Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine
Currently they still can't freely fly planes across Ukraine to drop dumb bombs because Ukraine still has those mid to high altitude AA operational, so they have relied on cruise missiles fired from bombers outside Ukraine's airspace (like fired at the Yavoriv training center in western Ukraine).
Note from the report on the Desert Storm operation, a majority of bombs were delivered at 12,000 to 15,000 feet (out of range for MANPADs) because Brig. Gen. John M. Glosson called for it after earlier losses at lower altitudes. This included plenty of unguided munitions. The report on page 121 said for targets where only unguided MK-84 bombs were used, F16s successfully destroyed the target 52 percent of the time (12/23) and FA18s 43% (3/7). The B-52s exclusively used unguided bombs at high altitude and Page 113 shows 25 fully successful targets vs 35 not fully successful. Unfortunately stats like CEP appears to be classified and redacted.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-97-134.pdf
So unguided munitions can still be used and hit targets a significant percentage of the time from medium to high altitudes out of the range of MANPADs and low altitude AA defenses.
Unguided munitions can be used to hit targets with some precision, but only if the air crews are trained to do it. NATO pilots train for this mission quite a bit. NATO has an annual competition for bombing accuracy. Western pilots get about 200 hours of flight time a year, plus hundreds more in simulators. The Russian pilots get far fewer hours in the air and a lot less simulator time, if at all.
The strategic bombing survey after WW II found that even with the mush slower aircraft of the 1940s bombing accuracy sucked from higher altitude unless the crews were very well trained. Most of the best crews ended up in pathfinder units that marked targets for the less experienced bombers coming behind them.
With the tech available to NATO aircraft today, they can compensate for the higher speeds of modern aircraft but the crews need to be drilled on bombing accuracy to have constant training to keep their skills up. Bombing at high speeds is still difficult, even with high tech bomb sights.
Erik Rudel, the German Stuka ace was a consultant on the development of the A-10. The USAF brass wanted a super sonic plane, but Rudel argued for something even slower than the A-10. For ground attack the slower you go the more accurate you can be. The A-10 was the compromise. And even then the USAF brass kept trying to retire it before it proved successful in the first Gulf War because it wasn't sexy. It had already been relegated to the Air National Guard units.
The Ukrainians do need to get all the SAM systems they can. The fact that the Russians are bombing from higher altitudes in the south are a sign that the Ukrainian air force is not effective now. I was asking about @petit_bateau's argument that when the Ukrainian air force runs out of operation aircraft the Russians would be able to step up their air war.
I think the Russians are doing the most they can with their air force right now regardless of how many Ukrainian MiGs are flying. Like their army, their air force is not as good as it looked on paper. Most Russian aircraft probably have avionics at least a generation behind NATO, if not two and their pilots get so little stick time they don't have the muscle memory to use the systems they do have efficiently.
Area bombing is most effective with large numbers of aircraft attacking on one mission and it doesn't appear the Russian air force is capable of mounting large strike formations. I reposted the article analyzing their capabilities yesterday or the day before.
Area bombing damage looks impressive on the news, but it really is very ineffective at winning wars. Every time it has been used, it did little to help the side using it. The US did it in Vietnam and lost. The Germans did it to London and lost. The RAF did it to Germany and won, but the bombing in each case made the public getting bombed more determined to fight than anything else.
Ukraine is taking tremendous damage to infrastructure and a huge percentage of their population is displaced, but the Russians are not doing enough damage to the Ukrainian's fighting ability to win the war. They are just running up the bill for the aftermath.
I know some countries are thinking about giving the Ukrainians the Russian assets they have seized after the war to help them rebuild. I hope they do. Ukraine is going to need it and Russia doesn't deserve it. I know the Russian people are going to take it on the chin, they didn't have a say in this and don't really know what's happening, but ultimately a country's people ends up owning whatever their government does. Sort of like the wounds from child abuse as an adult, it wasn't your fault, but it's now your responsibility.
In any case, I don't see where the Ukrainian air force is much of a factor now. The eventual grounding of their remaining MiGs is probably not going to make much difference. It would be good if the Ukrainians could get those MiGs from NATO, but I don't see it as critical. Getting SAM systems is more important.