Don't underestimate their air defense, it's not dead yet. I'm sure they're conserving interceptors so they don't actually fully run out, and can still deny airspace to more expensive platforms Ukraine would like to use along the frontline.
Their problem has always been too much area to protect, and drones being hard to deal with in general for modern air defense. Not that their air defense is actually useless or anything like that. There's still a lot of degrading that needs to be done to it.