This attack has clearly and massively crossed the biggest red line there is a for nuclear armed state that I am not sure Putin can just gloss over it even if he wanted to.
A systematic attack against your nuclear forces cannot go unanswered or it will invite more such attacks until your entire nuclear capabilities becomes compromised.
People love to have a dig at Russian incompetence, but it’s hard to see anyone else being able to deal with suck an attack much better.
The idiotic thing is that if Ukraine did this against other conventional bases directly involved in the war in Ukraine, the results would have been significantly impactful on the war by dealing a real solid blow against Russian Tac Air. And Putin would be able to do little more than to seethe and rage.
But this blatant and massive attack against Russian nuclear forces genuinely gives him legit cause to use nukes against Ukraine to establish deterrence against anyone else thinking of making similar terrorist style attacks.
And playing devils advocate here, what would NATO actually do if he did drop nukes on Ukraine? Charge into the nuclear war themselves? Of course not. They couldn’t really even use that to put undue pressure on China to sanction Russia as the obvious response would be, FAFO, what did you expect to happen to go after Russian nuclear forces like that in the first place?
It definitely crosses the red line, but Ukraine has carried out strikes against the Russian nuclear triad before, although not successfully, the Russians retaliated symbolically, which was not to be expected considering that according to the extract from the “State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence”, approved by decree of President Putin on November 19, 2024:
“Part III.
Conditions for the transition of the Russian Federation to the use of nuclear weapons
…
Paragraph 19. The conditions that determine the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons by the Russian Federation include:
…
c) attacks by an enemy against critically important state or military facilities of the Russian Federation, the deactivation of which would lead to the cessation of the response actions of nuclear forces.”
What this attack may be as a consequence is that the peace negotiations may be definitively over. In fact, it was more than clear that neither side wanted peace, this attack demonstrated once and for all that any negotiations are unlikely.
As for retaliation, of course there will be, but I mean it in the sense of being effective and not just showing strength, as the Russians have been doing whenever they suffer a setback in war. There will be retaliation, but I sincerely hope it will be mild, as it has been since the beginning.
As for Russian incompetence, the VKS intelligence should have already been aware of the FPV attack on air bases, especially air bases that house strategic bombers. Therefore, an air force at war would have invented a thousand ways to protect its strategic aviation, one of which is literally arming the air force infantry at the air bases with anti-drone weapons, including shotguns with bullets specifically designed for anti-FPVs, as the Russians have been doing on the front line.
I will not go on here about what could be within the competence of the VKS intelligence, but this only demonstrates incompetence. Furthermore, the Russians know that the Ukrainians are receiving help from Western intelligence, especially British intelligence, which I believe is 100% involved in this attack.
