Russia rattles nuclear saber again as Ukraine destroys its munitions | News about the Russia-Ukraine war

Russia has tailored its nuclear response doctrine to the specific threat of long-range attacks from Ukraine, even as Kiev forces demonstrated last week the devastating impact such attacks can have on Moscow's conventional war effort.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently “outlined the approaches” for a new edition of the basics of state policy on the use of nuclear weapons, wrote his right-hand man, Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, on Telegram on Wednesday.

“A massive launch and crossing of our border with enemy air and space weapons, including aircraft, missiles and UAVs, can under certain conditions become the basis for the use of nuclear weapons,” he wrote.

“An aggression against Russia by a non-nuclear-weapon state, but with the support or participation of a nuclear-weapon state, will be considered a joint attack,” Medvedev added.

These threat profiles are tailored precisely to Ukraine, which renounced nuclear weapons in 1994 but is supported by nuclear powers Britain, France and the United States and has been banned from using Western-supplied weapons for depth attacks within Russia.

Putin has already said that the use of these weapons would send Russia into war with NATO.

The latest move appears aimed at mitigating the risk of a first strike. Russian officials recently told the Washington Post that the oft-repeated threats have become hackneyed through overuse and “do not scare anyone” in the West.

Ukraine has used home-made drones to attack Russian logistics centers, reminding Russia on Saturday what it could achieve without using Britain-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles and US-supplied Army Tactical Missiles (ATACMS).

Military intelligence and special forces drone operators attacked Russian ammunition depots in Tikhoretsk in the Krasnodar region, 300 km (185 miles) southeast of free Ukrainian territory, and in Toropets in Tver, 500 km (310 miles) north of Ukraine.

Ukraine's General Staff estimated that 2,000 tons of ammunition were destroyed in the attack in Tikhoretsk.

Estonian intelligence chief Colonel Ants Kiviselg said the attack on Toropetsk may have cost the Russian army three months' worth of supplies.

“Thirty thousand tons of ammunition exploded – that’s 750,000 shells,” Kiviselg told the ERR news agency. “This is actually a two to three month supply of ammunition. As a result of this attack, the Russian Federation suffered losses of ammunition, and we will see the consequences of this loss on the front in the coming weeks.”

Commercial satellite photos of the sites later showed that bunkers separated by earthen walls were completely burned out.

Russian civilians who filmed the smaller of the two explosions saw a massive explosion and a mushroom cloud over Tikhoretsk.

“Such an overcrowded array of concentrated materiel underscores the lack of operational security in Russia's rear supply depots and demonstrates the extent to which Western restrictions prohibiting Ukraine from firing Western-provided weapons into Russia have given the Russian command the flexibility to adequately manage its rear areas “wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

“This flexibility has given Russia the opportunity to optimize large rear staging facilities to transport mass quantities of material to Ukraine.”

Ukraine has attempted to use Storm Shadows and ATACMS to target Russian TU-95MS and Sukhoi-35 bombers taking off from Russian airfields to drop glide bombs on the Ukrainian front.

These inertial bombs, retrofitted with flying surfaces and some with guidance systems, have a range of 40-60 km (25-37 miles). Ukraine said the only way to stop them was to shoot down the planes before they released their payload. Each bomb carries between 250 kg (550 pounds) and three tons of explosives and has devastating effects.

This was evident on Monday when Russia dropped glide bombs on the city of Zaporizhia for the first time, damaging 14 buildings and two schools and injuring 21 people.

On September 19, the European Parliament adopted a resolution lifting restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western weapons by 425 votes in favour, 131 against and 63 abstentions.

Russian Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin responded: “What the European Parliament is demanding paves the way to a nuclear world war.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia's nuclear response may not come in the form of a nuclear weapon but in the form of a power plant.

“Putin is apparently planning attacks on our nuclear power plants and their infrastructure with the aim of disconnecting the plants from the power grid,” he said at the 79th UN General Assembly in New York.

“With the help of… satellites from other countries, Russia receives images and detailed information about the infrastructure of our nuclear power plants.”

Zelensky clarified in an interview with ABC News the day before that he was referring to China.

“Russia uses Chinese satellites and takes photos of details of objects at nuclear facilities,” he said.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Vladyslav Vlasyuk said this week that 60 percent of foreign components in Russian-made weapons come from China.

The drone race

The attacks on Tikhoretsk and Toropets were carried out using drones built in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also pioneered precision bombing of armored vehicles and personnel using smaller first-person viewer drones.

Facing Western restrictions, Ukraine pledged in December to build at least a million smaller drones this year. Its Defense Minister Rustem Umjerov said on Saturday that this goal would be exceeded.

“Our capacity is several million drones, we are capable of doing this,” Umyerov said at a fundraising event. “Next year we will not let the enemy pass us by, so we will already produce many times more.”

Putin recently said Russia produced 140,000 drones last year and would increase that number almost tenfold by 2024.

On Monday, the European Union proposed a 35 billion euro ($39 billion) loan by the end of the year to help Ukraine meet its 2025 production targets.

The loan would be the EU's contribution to a G7 commitment of 45 billion euros ($50 billion).

Although part of the loan will be used to build bomb shelters for schools, the money would massively expand the size of Ukraine's defense industry, which Umyerov recently estimated at 20 billion euros ($22 billion).