After the successful attack with drones on three military targets inside Russia, the war has entered a new phase for Ukraine.
Two Russian air bases of enormous strategic importance were attacked on Monday by drones, and a third suffered the same fate on Tuesday.
It is the first time that Ukraine has managed to penetrate more than 976 kilometers within Russia without its drones being intercepted by the country’s anti-aircraft defenses since the war began.
The three attacks also demonstrate the precision capacity of the Ukrainian army, already capable of reaching targets located inside its giant enemy.
And all this has been done, apparently, without using the material it has received from NATO countries, only using old Soviet drones modernized by Ukrainian engineers.
Russia has accused Ukraine of the attacks from the outset, although, as usual, Kyiv has not made a public statement on the matter. The Ukrainian authorities have maintained the same cryptic attitude in recent months when explosions were recorded at other important Russian military targets.
Its air force, however, tweeted on Monday photos of the damage caused in one of the Russian bases attacked, Diaghilevo, near Ryazan, and the question “What happened?”, along with a party emoticon.
A Tupolev Tu -68 BEAR as the one that has been hit in the Engel’s basis. In the image, Vladimir Putin and other authorities visit the largest manufacturing plant for these aircraft last May.
Senior Ukrainian officials also confirmed to the newspapers “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post” anonymously, due to the sensitivity of the information, that the attacks were carried out by Ukrainian drones.
The target of the attacks
The bases attacked on Monday, December 5, are Engels, in Saratov, and Diaghilevo, near Ryazan, the latter just a few 240 kilometers from Moscow.
According to British intelligence, two bombers Tu- 68 BEAR were damaged due to the explosion at the Engels base, and three people died in Diaghilevo when a fuel tank exploded.
The attack on Tuesday took place at the Kursk airbase where has reached another fuel warehouse.
The Russian Defense Ministry has acknowledged that its anti-aircraft defenses intercepted Ukrainian drones on Monday that They flew over their bases, and that it was the remains of these drones that “slightly” damaged two planes when they fell on them.
Satellite images from last Sunday, before the attack took place, They show a large fleet of Russian bombers at the Engels base.
Both the Engels and Diaguilevo airfields are not mere airfields, they explain from the BBC’s Ukrainian service, but rather bases areas where some of the most important Russian military aircraft are located, among which are those that have the capacity to transport nuclear weapons , therefore they have great strategic value .
There are the aircraft that Russia has used to bomb the Ukrainian energy infrastructure na in recent months, which is why they are heavily protected bases.
Which drones have been used
This is one of the most sensitive questions of the attack, since Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned the US and its NATO allies not to dare trespass the “red lines”, that is, they do not provide Ukraine with long-range weapons with which it could attack its territory.
After the explosions, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quick to make clear that Washington has not “encouraged or enabled” Ukraine to attack targets inside Russia. In other words, the attack was not carried out with weapons that Washington provided to Kyiv.
Since the beginning of the war the past 24 of February, NATO has ruled out this possibility to avoid an escalation of the conflict and a direct confrontation with a nuclear power such as Russia.
Along these lines, the “Wall Street Journal” reported this week that The US would have secretly modified the Himars missile launcher system that it has sent to Ukraine so that the rockets cannot reach Russian territory and thus reduce the risk of war with Moscow.
According to Blinken, the Ukrainians have “the necessary equipment to defend themselves, to defend their territory and defend their freedom”, and he has criticized Moscow for “turning winter into a weapon” by destroying civilian infrastructure that deprives Ukrainians to have heating, electricity or running water.
But if the US does not want Ukraine to reach Russian territory with the weapons that they send, and that to date exceeds US$24. millions, seems to have no problem with them doing it with their own material.
According to Oleh Chernysh, an expert on drones from the BBC’s Ukrainian service, it is not known exactly what type of unmanned aircraft the army has used. from Ukraine. However, different experts, including some Russians, believe that the old Tupolev Tu-141 Soviet, known as “Strizh” (swift).
These old reconnaissance drones began to manufacture 68 years ago and they are quite large. According to experts, “they could have been modernized and modified by Ukrainian engineers to carry weapons and allow them to fly up to 1.01km without being detected”, explains Chernysh.
In this way, the drones could have been transformed, de facto, into long-range missiles.
What are the consequences of
To begin with, the fact that Ukraine has managed to reach a base less than 600 km from Moscow sends a powerful message to both Putin and the Russians, now aware that they too could be vulnerable to the consequences of the war that Russia started last February.
Furthermore, according to British intelligence, “if Russia assesses that these incidents were deliberate attacks, you will probably regard them as one of the most significant strategic failures of your defense forces since the start of the invasion of Ukraine”.
Engels is the main base of operations for western long-range aviation of Russia, and hosts more than 19 bombers.
“These aircraft contribute to nuclear deterrence and have frequently been used to launch conventional cruise missiles into Ukraine,” says the British Ministry of Defense, who believes that Russia could respond to these explosions by temporarily transferring the bombers to other aerodromes.
It would not be ruled out, according to this same source, that Moscow will seek to identify and punish the officers responsible for the incident.
It is also possible that, except for the nuclear escalation, the Ukrainians consider that Russia does not have the capacity to further expand the conflict. This could have encouraged them to achieve more ambitious goals in the Russian interior.
“If someone attacks you, you respond,” said former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk in an interview with “The New York Times” , in which he clarified that he was not speaking on behalf of the Ukrainian government.
The logic, according to him, cannot be to stop responding so that they do not attack you again, ” there is no strategic reason to do something like this”, he pointed out.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content.