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Ukraine Strikes More Boldly, Seeing Little Room for Russia to Escalate


KYIV, Ukraine — Flames and thick smoke rose over a Russian airport on Tuesday following Ukraine’s third drone strike in two days on a military base on Russian soil, signaling a bolder stage of Ukraine’s offensive triggered by long-range weapons and unconstrained by fear of reprisal.

After nine months of Russian bombardment of their towns and cities, the Ukrainians savored the taste of retaliation and demonstrated that their faction could now push deep into Russian territory, theoretically capable of fighting back. the ability to attack Moscow if they wanted to. The attacks also showed for the first time to millions of Russians that they too could be vulnerable.

Ukraine’s new long-range strike capability was highlighted Monday with strikes on air bases about 300 miles from the nearest Ukrainian territory, demonstrating its ability to evade Russian air defenses and evade Russian air defenses. precision attack. Both the Russian government and a senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to transmit sensitive information, said they were carried out by Ukraine using drones.

“If Russia were to assess the incidents as deliberate attacks, it would probably consider it one of the most strategically important failures of the defense force since,” the British Ministry of Defense said in a statement. since the invasion of Ukraine”. intelligence assessment released on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, an explosion ignited fuel tanks near an air base in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region, about 80 miles from Ukraine. Russian officials said it was another drone strike but did not explicitly blame Ukraine.

The topic remains sensitive enough that the Ukrainian government tries to avoid any public admission of responsibility for the strikes. But officials and civilians alike share the perception that, without nuclear escalation, Russia won’t be able to do more to Ukraine to retaliate for what it hasn’t done, with a wave of attacks on the energy grid. energy and other infrastructure in the country.

“If someone attacks you, you fight back,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defense minister of Ukraine, said in an interview, explaining that he did not represent the government and could not confirm the attacks. labour. “You cannot consider, this person will attack you because you are fighting back. There is absolutely no strategic reason not to try to do this.”

As of this week, he added, “the Russians’ understanding that they are invincible and unattainable in Russia will be gone.”

Western analysts agree that there is little risk of escalation from Moscow. Robin Niblett, a former director of Chatham House, the London-based think-tank, said Russia has escalated “by destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure to try to change the strategic landscape of the war, forcing Ukraine to surrender. sit at the negotiating table and warn the Europeans that it’s getting more expensive. day by day to rebuild Ukraine.”

From the very beginning of the war, Kiev sought to push the war to Russia. Within a month of the invasion in February, the Ukrainian military staged a helicopter attack on fuel depots in Russia, raising Russia’s first air raid alarm since World War II. . Explosions at ammunition depots, railway bridges, fuel depots and military bases inside Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine followed.

But those attacks were launched at fairly close range, no more than a few dozen miles.

In October, Ukraine’s state arms manufacturer, Ukroboronprom, said it was finalizing the development of a drone with a range of more than 600 miles and carrying a 165-pound warhead. And on Sunday – the day before two remote Russian bases were attacked – the company said it had completed testing the new weapon.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Monday’s attacks used Soviet-era jet-powered drones. Weapons experts say the specific aircraft could be the Tupolev TU-141 Strizh, a spy drone first developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and repurposed by the Ukrainians. can carry explosives. Analysts say it can fly at 600 mph at low altitudes, like some cruise missiles, making it difficult to detect and shoot down.

Douglas Barrie, a military aviation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said the strikes were “a sort of symbolic gesture”. “You hunt down bomber bases with something you have in your inventory, in a museum, or you have hidden in the back of your airport because you haven’t used it in a long time. .”


What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What is their motivation to tell us? Have they proven reliable in the past? Can we verify the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times still uses anonymous sources as a last resort. Reporters and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

While this week’s attacks are unlikely to significantly reduce Russia’s military capabilities, Ukraine’s determination to strike inside Russia could pose a challenge to its Western allies, which are determined to mind is not drawn into a shooting war with Russia.

“We neither encourage nor facilitate Ukrainian attacks inside Russia,” Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken said at a news conference on Tuesday. “But it is important to understand what Ukrainians are going through every day, given Russia’s ongoing aggression against their country, and our determination to ensure that they have their hands on, along with with many other partners around the world, the equipment they need to defend themselves and defend their territory.”

The United States and other NATO countries have repeatedly refused to provide Kyiv with Western weapons that can reach targets far from Moscow, such as the ATACMS missile, which has a range of up to 190 miles, with much higher speed and much greater destructive power than other missiles. Unmanned aircraft. The allies are also unwilling to provide Ukraine with the modern Western tanks and fighter jets it requires.

But Ulrich Speck, a German foreign policy analyst, says that Russia’s threats to intensify war, especially with nuclear weapons, are increasingly meaningless. World leaders friendly to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, including President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, have warned against it and US officials have warned against it. threatens unspecified dire consequences if the Kremlin takes that step.

NATO and Washington “have accepted that the Ukrainians are pushing for this, and over time the fear of Russian escalation has subsided,” Speck said.

Russian airfields and the warplanes there have been used to launch many of the missiles that Moscow’s forces have used for months to hit Ukraine behind the front lines, killing civilians and damaging damage vital services such as housing, electricity, heat and water.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army officer, wrote on the blog platform Substack about Ukraine’s new readiness to strike inside Russia: “It’s not an escalation, as some are sure. definitely confirmed. But it is a necessary political and military measure for Ukraine to limit the humanitarian harm caused by Russia’s brutal drone and missile attacks.”

The Engels Air Force Base on the Volga River, one of the sites hit on Monday, is the kind of sensitive target that the United States and its allies fear Ukraine could strike with long-range Western weapons, if they have them. The base is home to several Russian nuclear-capable, long-range bombers, part of Russia’s nuclear deterrent, and there have been unconfirmed reports that some That bomber was damaged in the attack.

Zagorodonyuk, a former defense minister, said that Ukrainian officials do not believe that Russia is capable of escalating a conventional military attack on their country and in fact hope that attacks on Russian soil will reduce that possibility.

“From what I can see, the consideration is that Russia will use whatever means are available, regardless of our response, to force Ukraine into submission,” he said. “That’s their strategic plan.”

Report contributed by Lara Jakes In Rome, Steven Erlanger in Brussels, Marc Santora in Kiev, Ukraine, Richard Pérez-Peña in New York and Michael Crowley in Washington.

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