A Second Ukraine Drone Targets Russia’s
Long-range Nuclear Launch Warning System
Tom Balmforth / Reuters
KYIV (May 27, 2024) — A Ukrainian drone targeted a long-range radar deep inside Russia on Sunday, the second such strike in a week on infrastructure used by Moscow to monitor Ukraine’s military activities, a Kyiv intelligence source said.
The source said the strike was aimed at a “Voronezh M” radar near the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region some 1,500 km from the closest territory held by Kyiv’s forces.
The source, who declined to be named, did not say if there was any damage, but the move would make it one of the deepest attempted drone strikes in Russian territory since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the matter, although Russia’s Izvestia newspaper and other media outlets reported that a drone had come down in the Orenburg region on Sunday and that no civilian infrastructure had been hit.
The Kyiv source also confirmed reports of an earlier Ukrainian drone attack on a “Voronezh-DM” radar in southern Krasnodar region on May 22.
The Russian service of U.S. media outlet RFE/RL cited satellite imagery showing damage at the Voronezh-DM radar site in Krasnodar region. Reuters has not independently verified the imagery.
Russia’s new Voronezh-DM radar site in Krasnodar region.
Thord Are Iversen, an independent defenсe analyst and former Norwegian Navy officer, said the radars were part of Russia’s ballistic missile early warning system. Russia is a major nuclear power.
Their primary function, he told Reuters, was to detect and track intercontinental ballistic missiles and to determine if Russia was under nuclear attack. They also have secondary roles such as space tracking.
Asked why the radars were targeted, the Kyiv source said: “They monitor the actions of the Ukrainian security and defence forces in the south of Ukraine.”
With Russia’s invasion now in its third year, Kyiv has increasingly relied on long-range drones to target Russian military and energy targets, in particular oil refineries, in recent months.
Russia has pounded Ukraine with long-range strikes throughout the war and renewed its aerial assault on the energy system, in what it says is retaliation for Kyiv’s strikes on targets in Russia.
A Ukrainian media outlet cited an unnamed source saying the drone had flown 1,800 km (1,118 miles) in Sunday’s attack.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian intelligence source said that Kyiv’s longest-range drone attack to date had targeted an oil-processing plant in Russia’s Bashkiria region at a range of 1,500 km.
US Accused of Striking Nuclear Missile
Early Warning System in Latest Escalation
National Security News
(May 29, 2024) — Fears are growing that a major escalation could be on the horizon in the Russia-Ukraine conflict following a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian radar station for tracking nuclear missiles that some Russian officials believe the US was behind.
This week, Ukraine hit the high-tech Armavir radar station in the border area of Krasnodar. The system provided Russia with conventional air defense but also played a key role in its nuclear warning system. It has also been used to track the long-range ATACMS missiles that the US supplied to Ukraine.
Officials in Kiev have already acknowledged their responsibility for the attack, confirming over the weekend that they targeted the facility.
A senior researcher for the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, Mauro Gilli, said that he believes the move was a tactical success because it means Russia will have to redeploy its air defense systems. It also sent a message that no military site in Russia is untouchable.
However, many other analysts in the West have expressed reservations about the move and believe that Ukraine should not target any Russian nuclear infrastructure.
Federation of American Scientists nuclear arsenal expert Hans Kristensen said: “Not a wise decision on the part of Ukraine.”
Norwegian military analyst Thord Are Iversen agreed, saying that the move was “not a particularly good idea… especially in times of tension. It’s in everyone’s best interest that Russia’s ballistic missile warning system works well.”
Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Rogozin.
“Ukraine Could Not Have
Carried Out Attack Without US Help”
Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian senator and member of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, believes the US should be considered directly responsible for the hit. He said that it is very unlikely that Ukraine could have carried out such a strike on its own without any involvement from the US, adding that military superiority over Russia is something the US has sought for many years.
He said that attacks like this one on key elements of Moscow’s nuclear umbrella could cause the entire worldwide nuclear security architecture to collapse.
Referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he said that “the US has commissioned a crime by hiring an irresponsible bandit” to attack what he described as a nuclear early warning system. The radar station has been in operation since 2013 and can detect incoming ballistic and cruise missiles at a range of 6,000 kilometers, keeping track of as many as 500 targets at once.
He said that the US’s “deep involvement in the armed conflict and total control over Kiev’s military planning means that the version that the US does not know about Ukrainian plans to strike Russia’s missile defense system can be discarded.”
Russia has not yet made any official comments about the attack, which came not long after it started carrying out tactical nuclear missile exercises in the Southern Military District, which includes Russian regions bordering Ukraine as well as Crimea. The drills are widely being interpreted as a warning to Western officials who are increasingly implying they could deepen their involvement in the war.
Meanwhile, the US has not backed down on its insistence that Ukraine avoid using Western weapons for cross-border strikes, although US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently hinted that a change of policy on this particular matter could be forthcoming. Some Ukrainian military commanders have complained that Russia is building up its forces just across the border knowing that Ukraine would not be able to strike them.
NATO/Kiev Targeting Russia’s Nuclear Launch
Early Warning Detection System
Mark Sloboda, an analyst who lives in Moscow; says the attack occurred in the Orenburg region of the Russian Federation. Slobobda discusses the two drone attacks against the Russian nuclear Early Warning System in his video interview starting at ten minutes:
NATO Attacks Russia’s Nuclear Warning System
Comment
(May 28, 2024) — A second drone attack carried out against another Russian nuclear Early Warning System was reported yesterday by Reuters and Bloomberg. Both of these attacks used Western drones and they could not have been carried out without the support of US aerial and satellite reconnaissance guidance, which provided the flight paths through Russian air defense systems. This means these have been NATO attacks on Russia’s nuclear Early Warning System (EWS)
Both of the attacked EWS play NO ROLE in the Ukraine War; they are used exclusively by Russia to detect a nuclear attack on Russia.
Sloboda tells us that a drone was shot down during an attempt to attack a second Russian nuclear EWS facility in the Orenburg region (the facility is similar to the first station that was attacked). Sloboda notes that Russia has only 10 of these types of facilities, which it depends upon to detect a nuclear attack against Russia. The US/NATO have now attacked 2 of these EWS facilities and have damaged at least one of them; possibly both of these facilities have been disabled.
As I previously stated when reporting on the first drone attack, ANY such attacks against the EWS system used to protect Russia from a nuclear attack can justify, under Russian law, a nuclear retaliatory strike. The potential to cripple Russia’s ability to respond to nuclear threats, and effectively triggers 19c of Russia’s nuclear response doctrine:
Paragraph 19c of the Basic Principles states: “attack by an adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions.” This effectively means any interference of any kind against civilian or military infrastructure, which would undermine nuclear retaliation capability.
The Russian military has to consider WHY this was done. Is it a prelude to a US nuclear first strike against Russia? The Russian military has to consider this as a real possibility.
Or this it an attempt by the US/NATO to provoke a Russian nuclear strike against Western targets?
The Biden regime is totally out of control.
