Over the past week, Ukrainian drones have struck two Russian Voronezh-M nuclear early warning radar stations. These stations, located in Armavir (Krasnodar Krai) and Orsk (Orenburg Region), are key elements of Russia's nuclear deterrent system.
According to the military doctrine of the Russian Federation, an attack on nuclear deterrence facilities can become a pretext for a nuclear strike by Russia.
So far, neither Ukraine nor the Russian Federation has officially commented on these strikes. If we do not take into account the statement of Senator Dmytro Rogozin, who accused the USA of complicity in the attack and said that the Americans "will respond in full."
What does it mean?
Regarding the purely military expediency of striking these stations, experts express different opinions.
Some believe that it is expedient, since the stations were used by the Russians to track the launch of missiles from Ukraine. Others say that they were hardly used for these purposes. In addition, the result of the attack is unknown - whether the radars are disabled or not.
But these strikes may have political reasons and consequences.
It is possible that in this way Ukraine is trying to show the West that it should not be afraid of Russia's nuclear threats, since it cannot protect even its own nuclear deterrent systems. That is why it is possible to strike with Western weapons on Russian territory, shoot down Russian missiles with NATO air defense systems, and send troops into Ukraine.
Although, in fact, the consequences of these strikes may be exactly the opposite, sharply increasing the West's fears about the threat of nuclear war and giving additional arguments to those who, for example, oppose the agreement to strike the Russian Federation with Western missiles.
What will be Russia's reaction? The Russian authorities have not yet officially responded to the attacks on the stations. Perhaps, while they are being determined with public and non-public reaction. And he will try to use the situation in his interests, in one way or another "strengthening" the West's signal that "the situation is on the edge".
But, in any case, strikes on the facilities of the Russian nuclear forces are a powerful pass to the Russian "war party", which has long been demanding to move from verbal threats to the West to direct actions or to issuing an ultimatum to it with the threat of using nuclear weapons .
It is not a fact that these strikes will be a reason for such actions or an ultimatum, but they strengthen the position of those forces in Moscow who are in favor of radicalizing the conflict with the West.
And this generally fits into the general strategy of the conditional global "party of war" to bring it to a new level of escalation with, perhaps, a direct clash between the West and the Russian Federation.
