Moscow’s accusation that Ukrainian drones struck two airbases deep inside Russia has once again raised the febrile question of escalation nine months into the war.
The strikes are an extraordinary breach of Russia’s assumptions that it can protect its deep interior, from which safe harbors its strategic bombers have caused carnage across Ukraine with relative impunity.
These are airbases very far inside Russia, and whatever the truth of the strikes – whether they represent a new long-distance drone capability Ukraine has advertised, or there’s another explanation – this is just not something that was meant to happen when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “10-day invasion” in February. Week by week, there are yet more signs that Moscow’s military machine cannot perform as advertised.
On Tuesday, a Russian official said another drone strike had hit a Russian airfield in Kursk, nearer to the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the blasts, in keeping with Kyiv’s policy of official silence around attacks inside Russia or in Russian-occupied Crimea. An aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to gloat over the strikes, tweeting cryptically that “if something is launched into other countries’ airspace, sooner or later unknown flying objects will return to departure point.”]
Russian state news agencies heaped discomfort onto humiliation by adding Monday that the initial two airfields in question had in fact been photographed by a US-based commercial satellite imaging company over the weekend.
Source: cnn.com
