ineffectual sorties

A Yahoo definition of "sortie"

As anyone who has spent some time in a public facility in a French-speaking area can attest, "sortie" means "exit," or more colloquially, "going out." However, in military parlance, a "sortie" is an operational flight from a military aircraft. A Yahoo! Reference search on the term resulted in two definitions: an armed attack, especially one made from a plane surrounded by enemy forces, or a flight of a combat aircraft on a mission.

So . . . ineffectual sorties are useless military missions that don't make a an impact on the situation; useless gesture.

The term sortie, from the French verb sortir--to go out--in a military sense originally derived from a special kind attack by the defenders of a garrison under siege, who would "sortie" to attack enemy forces attempting to undermine the walls.

In terms of military aviation, a sortie is one mission by one aircraft. One aircraft can make more than one sortie in a day--so, for example, RAF and USAAF aircraft made more than 14,800 sorties over the Normandy beachhead on June 6, 1944. That doesn't mean that there were more than 14,000 RAF and USAAF aircraft, but rather means that several of, and probably most of those aircraft flew out, attacked targets in Normandy, flew back to England where they were refueled and re-armed, and flew out to attack again.

The quoted material seems to suggest that the Russians are literally sending their outdated aircraft out on missions--but, of course, as Russia is not at war with anyone, on pointless missions. It is used to ironically emphasize the claim that Putin's rhetoric is ineffective.