The missile attack on Dnipro by at least seven projectiles, including the hypersonic Kinshal and an unspecified heavy long-range missile, is a clear response to Ukraine’s use of American ATACMS and British Storm Shadow to hit targets inside Russia.
The message seems blunt. If Ukraine uses modern Nato weapons, then Russia can use its big arsenal of intercontinental missiles, capable of firing nuclear warheads from deep inside Russia. The big missile used today is alleged to have been launched from Astrakhan. Furthermore ICBM missiles like the RS-26, as well as the medium range Kinshal and Iskander missile already, can be swiftly adapted to carry nuclear warheads.
Today’s seven missile attack on Dnipro – with damage reports still coming in – is what is known in the military trade as ‘a firepower demonstration.’ It says this shows the kind of thing we have got, and its effect can be devastating if fully unleashed. One of the footnotes from today maybe that we can use these heavy weapons to obliterate Kyiv, if we wish.
There is an implied warning to Ukraine’s allies in the neighbourhood, especially Poland, Finland and Nato’s Nordic alliance, that they, too, could be targets very soon. However, this risks an all-out confrontation with Nato as a whole, something that Moscow has avoided up to now.
Putin is desperate to achieve a recognised victory on the battlefield before the end of the year. He wants to get the Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk pocket, the chunk of Russia they invaded and took in the late spring. Russian forces are grinding forward there, as they are at several critical points on the front from Luhansk and Donetsk, and in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. But progress is slow, and very expensive in manpower and ground attack equipment. Up to 2,000 soldiers are being killed and wounded a day tanks, with an average of 100 tanks and 200 artillery pieces destroyed every month.
The Russian forces have needed reinforcement by 10,000 North Koreans to fight for Kursk. They are expected likely to call on several times that number of North Koreans before the winter is out.
This is where ATACMS and Storm Shadow become significant. Armchair warriors in the US and UK have sucked their teeth, and declared the use of these weapons would be of limited effect – a case of too little, too late. Maybe – but with the battles for Kursk and Zaporizhzhia poised, the use of the missiles to hit supply lines, bunkers, and concentrations of reserve troops could tip the balance to Ukraine, however temporarily.
Putin needs victory before he can open peace talks – in which he would have a willing partner in the re-anointed Donald Trump. But it would have to be his peace and not Trump’s. The terms outlined so far are for an emasculated Ukraine – no turn to the West, and no support economically or militarily from the West all. A model for this is suggested by Russia’s erosion tactics now being pursued towards Georgia.
The target isn’t just Ukraine itself but the various alliances and nations of Western Europe – UK included. Already there are signs that a destabilisation campaign has been under way for well over a year. This includes attacks on underwater cable in the Baltics, completely deniable of course, mysterious fires in defence factories and freight warehouses, cyber attacks on communication networks on a daily basis.
This autumn, the Irish navy and coastguard has had to shoo away the Russian intelligence ‘Surveying’ vessel Yantar from paying too close attention to the offshore cable and communication nodes in the Irish Sea off Dublin and south west of Cork.
If he doesn’t get peace by the early new year, the signs of what Putin may do next in Ukraine look ominous. The Russians have talked about ‘lowering the threshold’ for the first use of nuclear weapons. More worrying is what the Russians appear to be doing in nuclear blackmail from Ukraine’s civil nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia, the biggest in the whole of Europe and which has been on the frontline since the war began in 2022.
Other plants have now become targets of Russian missile attacks and the Zaporizhzhia plant has to rely on diesel powered generators to keep cool and keep safe. The meltdown of a reactor at Chernobyl, siting on Ukraine’s northern border, was the worst civil nuclear accident in European history. Russia triggered a huge ecological disaster by blowing the Kahkovka dam in June last year.
Targeting these facilities invites consequences that Russia and Putin would not be able to control. The lessons from Chernobyl 1986 and Kahkovka 2023 are that the consequences would affect us all.
