Russia is rocking its nuclear arsenal again, as Ukraine destroys its arsenal | Russia-Ukraine war News

Russia has adapted its nuclear response doctrine to suit the specific threat of a long-range attack it faces from Ukraine, just as forces in Kyiv demonstrated last week the devastating effect it could have on Moscow’s conventional war effort.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently “explained the methods” of the new Fundamentals of State Policy on the use of nuclear weapons, wrote his right-hand man, deputy head of the National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, on Telegram on Wednesday.

“Massive launch and crossing of our border by enemy aerospace weapons, including aircraft, missiles and UAVs, under certain circumstances could be the basis for the use of nuclear weapons,” he wrote.

“The attack on Russia by a country that does not have nuclear weapons, but with the support or participation of a country that has nuclear weapons, will be considered a collective attack,” Medvedev said.

These threat profiles are designed to describe Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994, but is supported by nuclear-armed countries the United Kingdom, France and the United States, and is prohibited from using Western-provided weapons for deep-seated attacks. inside Russia.

Putin has said that the use of such weapons will put Russia at war with NATO.

The latest move appears to be designed to renew the threat of a first strike. Russian officials recently told The Washington Post that repeated threats have escalated due to overuse and “don’t scare anyone” in the West.

Ukraine has used its own drones to target Russian supply hubs, and on Saturday, it reminded Russia of what it can achieve even without using British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles and US-supplied Army Tactical Missiles (ATACMS).

Military pilots and special forces attacked Russian ammunition depots in Tikhoretsk in Krasnodar Krai, 300km (185 miles) southeast of the free zone of Ukraine, and Toropets in Tver, 500km (310 miles) in northern Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials estimated that the Tikhoretsk attack destroyed 2,000 tons of ammunition.

Estonia’s intelligence chief, Colonel Ants Kiviselg, said that the Toropetsk attack may have cost the Russian military three months’ worth of supplies.

“Thirty thousand tons of ammunition exploded – that’s 750,000 shells,” Kiviselg told ERR media. “This is actually two to three months worth of ammunition. As a result of this attack, the Russian Federation has lost ammunition, and we will see the consequences of this loss in the coming weeks.”

Commercial satellite images of these areas later showed buildings separated by mud walls completely burned.

Russian citizens filming the smaller of the two explosions captured the larger explosion and mushroom clouds over Tikhoretsk.

“Such a large stockpile underlines the lack of security in Russia’s warehouses, showing the extent to which Western restrictions preventing Ukraine from firing Western-supplied weapons to Russia have given the Russian command the flexibility to under-protect its rear areas,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, an institute. of research based in Washington.

“This flexibility has given Russia the ability to create a large rear platform to deploy large quantities of supplies to Ukraine on a large scale.”

Ukraine has sought to use Storm Shadows and ATACMS to attack Russian TU-95MS and Sukhoi-35 bombers as they take off from Russian airfields to drop bombs on Ukraine.

These inert bombs, reloaded by airspace and sometimes by guidance systems, have a range of 40-60km (25 to 37 miles). Ukraine has said the only way to stop them is to stop shooting down the planes before they release their lead payload. Each bomb carries between 250kg (550 pounds) and three tons of explosives, and has a devastating impact.

That was evident on Monday, when Russia dropped bombs for the first time in the city of Zaporizhzhia, destroying 14 buildings and two schools, and injuring 21 people.

On September 19, the European Parliament passed a resolution with 425 votes to 131 against and 63 against to remove restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons.

Russian Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin responded, “What the European Parliament wants paves the way for a nuclear world war.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Russia’s nuclear response may not take the form of a nuclear weapon, but a power station.

“It appears that Putin is planning an attack on our nuclear power plants and their infrastructure, aiming to disconnect the plants from the electricity grid,” he told the 79th UN General Assembly in New York.

“With the help of … foreign satellites, Russia receives images and detailed information about the infrastructure of our nuclear power plants.”

Zelenskyy explained in an interview with ABC News the previous day that he was referring to China.

“Russia has been using Chinese satellites, and taking detailed pictures of things in nuclear facilities,” he said.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Vladyslav Vlasyuk said this week that 60 percent of foreign parts for Russian-made weapons come from China.

Drone racing

The attacks on Tikhoretsk and Toropets were carried out by drones made in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also pioneered precision bombing techniques against armored vehicles and personnel using small first-person-view drones.

Given the Western restrictions, Ukraine pledged in December to build at least one million small drones this year. The Minister of Defense, Rustem Umyerov, said on Saturday that it will exceed that target.

“Our capacity is several million drones, we can do it,” Umyerov said on the phone. “Next year, we will not let the enemy pass us, so we will just produce several times.”

Putin recently said that Russia produced 140,000 drones last year, and will increase that tenfold by 2024.

On Monday, the European Union proposed a loan of 35 billion euros ($39bn) by the end of the year to help Ukraine meet its production goals by 2025.

The loan will be the EU’s contribution to a 45 billion euro ($50bn) bailout from the G7.

Although some of the loan money will be used to build bomb shelters in schools, the money will greatly increase the size of Ukraine’s defense industry, which Umyerov recently put at 20 billion euros ($22 billion).