Member-only story

Ukraine drilled a hole into Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine, and the Kremlin could do nothing about it

What will Jake do now?

Shankar Narayan
7 min readMay 26, 2024
How to drill a hole until it becomes whole? Please ask Ukraine (Licensed Image)

On June 2, 2020, the Russian Federation published the basic principles of its state policy on nuclear deterrence.

Article 19 C of this document lists “an attack by an adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, the disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions” as one of the “conditions for the transition of the Russian Federation to the use of nuclear weapons.”

That is exactly what Ukraine did a few days ago when multiple Ukrainian drones successfully hit the Voronezh-DM long-range early warning radar system located in Armavir, a city in the Krasnodar Krai region of southwestern Russia.

Armavir

Satellite images documented by open-source investigators show visible damage to the radar systems.

The two Voronezh-DM radars at Baronovsky Airfield are crucial components of Russia’s strategic early warning network. Their loss, even temporarily, degrades Russia’s ability to detect incoming nuclear threats. The first radar covers the…

--

--

Shankar Narayan
Shankar Narayan

Written by Shankar Narayan

He didn't care what he had or what he had left, he cared only about what he must do.

Responses (15)