New Ukrainian drone attacks have a chance to destroy Russia's “sense of impunity” due to Ukraine's lack of long-range missiles.
Ukraine's armed forces demonstrated this week that capable of hitting targets in Russia, and soon this ability will spread to the entire territory of the aggressor country, writes Financial Times citing a Ukrainian government defense adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity.
This week, the Armed Forces of Ukraine hit three military bases deep in Russia with Ukrainian-made drones – one of them only 160 km from Moscow.
“Attacks can happen again. We have no limits on distance and soon we will be able to reach all targets inside Russia – including Siberia. In Ukraine, we know how difficult it is to defend against such air attacks . Soon there will be no safe zones left in Russia either,” the government adviser said.
The Ukrainian government has not publicly claimed responsibility for the strikes, and many details remain secret, as is typical of other special operations in Kyiv, such as the combined air and sea drone attack on the Russian naval base in Sevastopol in October.
But what sets Ukraine's latest attacks apart is their range and the fact that they breached Russia's air defense system and struck strategic military bases that were previously thought to be invulnerable.
One of the bases, Engels Airfield near Saratov in southern Russia, about 600 km from the border with Ukraine, is home to Russian long-range bombers capable of carrying nuclear warheads. According to Ukrainian officials, it is also a launch pad for cruise missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.
“These air bases serve strategic bombers, which Russia uses not only to strike Ukrainian civilian objects, but also to threaten the whole world. But Ukraine's strikes have destroyed the image of the Russian Federation… Even such objects are weakly protected” , – said Serhiy Kuzan, head of the analytical center “Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation”.
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Representatives of the defense sector and analysts believe that one of the long-term consequences of these attacks could be that Russia disperses its armed forces inside the country, which will help to secure them, but will complicate the conduct of operations. In September, Russia's Black Sea Fleet moved some of its submarines more than 300 km east from its home port in Russian-annexed Crimea to Novorossiysk on the Russian mainland amid fears they would be vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes.
< p>“These attacks will certainly make the Russians less confident. They will have to think about how they allocate military assets and ensure their security. The Russians will doubt their ability to defend its strategic assets in [the country],” a Western defense ministry official said.
Ukraine also hopes that these attacks, if repeated on a sufficient scale, will help turn Russian public opinion against the conflict.
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