Russia and Ukraine have complied this Tuesday thousand days of war with an unprecedented escalation in the conflict, triggered by the first direct attack against Russian territory with long-range American missiles. An action already announced, but no less dangerous, since it had the approval from Washington and faces the renewed Russian threat of resorting to atomic weapons in cases like this.
The attack occurred at the least opportune moment, unless it sought a harsh reaction from the Kremlin yet to come. A few hours before the launch of the missiles against the Russian region of Bryansk, bordering Ukraine, Moscow had ratified its new nuclear doctrine, which allows the use of atomic bombs in response to attacks with conventional weapons that endanger Russian sovereignty. Attacks like the one carried out by kyiv against Bryansk.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed this Tuesday that its anti-aircraft systems shot down five ATACMS missiles over Bryansk, while a sixth projectile managed to hit a military arsenal from that border region with Ukraine, without causing any victims. The depth of this attack was about 110 kilometers inside Russian territory.
The launch by Ukraine of this type of projectiles, capable of hit targets on Russian soil with an average range of 300 kilometers, took place just two days after the American president, Joe Bidengave its authorization to kyiv to use long-range missiles against the Russian Federation, beyond the front line and the Ukrainian areas annexed or controlled by the Kremlin army.
A new phase in the war, according to Moscow
After acknowledging the impact in Bryansk, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrovstated in Brazil, during his participation in the G20 meetings, that Moscow “will consider the launch of long-range missiles guided by US military experts as a new qualitative phase of the war (implementation) by the West”.
According to the Russian minister, the Ukrainian army does not have the capacity to use these very sophisticated American missile systems. “Without the Americans it is impossible to use these missiles high technology,” he said.
Lavrov too blamed France and Great Britain of the possible use by the Ukrainian army of the Scalp and Storm Shadow missiles, respectively, that those countries have delivered to Ukraine. These missiles They can have a greater range even the American ATACMS and hit targets in the vicinity of Moscow, about 500 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border.
A thousand days have passed since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and the war seems to become more ferocious every day, threatening to involve more international actors.
In two years and almost nine months of fighting and destruction, Russia has finally assume the war initiativean initiative that is now challenged by American, British and French long-range missiles, and by the growing demands of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that The West gets fully involved in the conflict.
Ukraine is losing the war and Zelensky calls for more weapons and also a total American and European commitment to prevent defeat.
This situation on the battlefield unfavorable to Ukraine led Biden to make such a drastic decision in his last days in the White House, before donald trumpwinner of the elections held on November 5, will take office on January 20.
A decision motivated by the course of the war and the increasingly certain possibility of a resounding Ukrainian defeat, but also marked by Biden’s intention to make things a little difficult for Trump if he finally decides to unilaterally end the war in Ukraine, as he promised so many times.
Trump spoke during the election campaign, and before, that he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours as soon as he came to power. Given the current state of the war, this would mean for Ukraine the loss of almost a fifth of its territorynow annexed by Russia.
Anxiety
In these thousand days of war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen different stages that have led to the current situation of anxiety for the kyiv Government. Thus, after losing many of its initial conquests in the northeast of the country to a ukrainian counteroffensive In the summer of 2022, the Russian army armored itself in the annexed areas of Ukraine, in the east and south of the country.
In the summer of 2023, a new Ukrainian counteroffensive crashed into that nearly 1,200-kilometer-long, reinforced and well-entrenched Russian front line. Russia then took up the initiative and from the beginning of this year it began to prevail in the Donetsk region. Crucial battles such as those of Bakhmut, Avdivka or Vugledar were won by Russian troops.
The most that the Ukrainian army did in 2024 was to advance a few dozen kilometers into Russian territory, in the Kursk region, where Several thousand kyiv soldiers still resistattentive to the Russian counteroffensive that is being prepared and in which North Korean troops could participate.
One of the reasons given by the White House for now granting permission to Ukraine to attack the territory of the Russian Federation with the powerful ATACMS missiles is the need to hit these combined Russian-North Korean forces in Kursk before they wipe out the Ukrainian forces stationed there.
Russia flexes its nuclear muscle
Authorization to use long-range missiles, also granted by the United Kingdom and France, has led the West to cross a red line this week that Putin himself described as a possible confirmation that Washington and its NATO allies were directly entering the war.
The response has not been long in coming. Putin took advantage of this symbolic date of the thousand days of war to put his signature, delayed since September, on the new Russian nuclear doctrine. The warning was clear and direct against the United States, Europe and any other ally of kyiv that insists on turning the conflict around by becoming more involved in it.
The new Russian nuclear doctrine authorizes the use of atomic weapons in response to conventional attacks that pose “a critical threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Russia and its ally Belarus.
The renewed atomic strategy will consider as a “joint attack” on Russia the aggression by a country that does not have atomic weapons, but that has the backing of a nuclear power. This point could apply to Ukraine and its NATO allies, where several of its members, such as USA, France or United Kingdomhave notable nuclear arsenals.
Message to NATO
In a clear warning to NATO, the Russian nuclear doctrine states that “aggression by any state belonging to a military coalition (bloc or alliance) against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies will be considered an attack of the coalition as a whole.
The Russian nuclear response would also occur in the event that Russia suffered a massive attack with planes, missiles, drones and other flying devices. For the first time refers to dronesa weapon that plays a primary role in the Ukrainian war, with its use by both sides.
Fortunately, the new Russian nuclear doctrine document makes a final statement that may alleviate, to some extent, the present tension. For Russia, nuclear weapons are “an instrument of deterrence” and defensewhose use should only be considered as an “extreme and forced measure.”
Minister Lavrov himself pointed out in Rio de Janeiro that Russia will do everything possible to avoid nuclear war. If she doesn’t feel attacked, that is.
Threat capacity
The same decision to authorize the use of long-range missiles against Russian territory must be evaluated with serenitysince the ATACMS are not missiles mass produced in the United States and even less delivered to Ukraine in the necessary quantities so that they can turn the helm in the war.
Ukraine would need hundreds of these missiles (in quantities that not even the United States, Great Britain or France have in their arsenals) to change that course of the war. They can certainly be an asset that Zelensky puts on a negotiating tablethe question is that these can be convened in the midst of the unstoppable military escalation that is coming.
Zelensky does not rule out waiting for Putin to leave power to recover the east
At this time, not even Trump would have the ability to stop the conflict and Biden knew that when he gave his permission for Zelensky to launch his offensive with US missiles, risking an eventual dead end and underestimating the real risk of a large-scale escalation in Europe and perhaps the world.
There are two months left until Trump takes office. Two months that will be crucial to direct the war towards that dialogue table or force Zelensky to give up if it occurs a collusion between Trump and Putin to stop the conflict by suffocating the Ukrainian regime.
Zelensky is aware of this risk and perhaps for this reason, and for the first time, he considered this Tuesday in a speech before the Ukrainian Parliament the possibility that Ukraine must wait a while, until Putin leaves power in Russia, to recover the territories. snatched away
“We have to act intelligently. Maybe Ukraine will have to survive a certain person in Moscow to achieve all your goalsto restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” said the Ukrainian leader.
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