Ukraine has hit the radar of Russia's nuclear early warning and combat system, a development that automatically sets off developments as Russia's strategic weapons are expected to be put on high alert.
But mostly, the strike justifies the use of nuclear weapons by Russia according to the country's doctrine.
Although Russia does not have a DEFCON unit of measure, this strike and the ongoing tactical nuclear weapons exercise are nonetheless DEFCON level 2!
It is the first time that Ukraine has attacked a target of Russia's nuclear early warning system, which is useless for Ukraine as the radar detects incoming nuclear ICBMs, but very useful for NATO and the US.
In more detail, the Ukrainians hit the Voronezh-DM radar located near Armavir, Krasnodar.
Voronezh-DM is an advanced over-the-horizon (OTH) ultra-high frequency (UHF) early warning radar system for intercontinental ballistic and cruise missile attacks.
It has a range of 6,000 km. The particular radar that was shot down was monitoring the airspace as far as Poland.
It entered combat service in Armavir, Krasnodar Territory, in 2013. Russian President Vladimir Putin was present at the inauguration of the radar station. " The station is capable of detecting even the most inconspicuous target in fractions of a second, detecting launches of various types of missiles, hundreds and even thousands of kilometers from our borders," noted the Russian head of state at the time.
Russian media speak of a "reckless act that could lead to a serious escalation in Europe".
The former head of the state company Roscosmos and now a senator of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Rogozin, reported that the Ukrainian Forces attacked an installation of the Russian Missile Attack Warning System (MSWS) in the Krasnodar Territory.
This is a key element of the Battle Command System of the country's strategic nuclear forces.
The senator reports that as a result of the strike, the Kuban early warning system facility was damaged.
"In effect, this means that Russia has the right to consider this attack as a global threat to its state and national security, which, according to our doctrine, allows(!) the use of nuclear weapons(!) in response .
At the same time, it is not entirely clear who made this essentially irrational decision," writes Rogozin.
The two Voronezh-DMs are a key part of Russia's larger strategic early warning network, and their loss, even temporarily, could degrade the country's ability to detect incoming nuclear threats.
There are also concerns about how this could affect the ability of Russia's overall strategic warning network to assess potential threats due to a possible loss of overlapping coverage in some areas.
Beyond that, the attack on Armavir meets the conditions the Russian government publicly laid out in 2020 for actions that could trigger a retaliatory nuclear strike. Russia's early warning network is part of the country's broader nuclear deterrent posture.
"The conditions determining the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons by the Russian Federation" include any "attack by [an] adversary against critical government or military sites of the Russian Federation, the disruption of which would undermine the response actions of nuclear forces," according to Moscow.
It is the Nuclear Deterrence doctrine that the Kremlin published two years ago.
All this follows the start of regular nuclear drills by Russian forces in the country's Southern Military District, which borders Ukraine.
It remains to be seen exactly how Russia will respond to the Armavir attack, which could potentially include a new nuclear alert.
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