Russia is creating a risk for its nuclear force with its own hands. By deploying elements of its nuclear triad in the war against Ukraine, it is turning its strategic delivery systems into legitimate military targets, says expert Oleksii Izhak from Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, Espreso reports.
Ukrainian strike drones and precision-guided weapons are increasingly destroying Russian aircraft and dual-use missile systems — those capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads.
This trend became especially evident after Ukraine’s large-scale Operation Spiderweb, a series of precision strikes on Russia’s strategic airbases. These attacks exposed the vulnerability of sites previously believed to be immune to any assault. It was only after this campaign that Moscow began warning of a “threat to Russia’s nuclear security.”
On 1 June, Ukraine’s Security Service carried out a special operation that struck 41 aircraft, part of Russia’s nuclear triad. The mission has become a symbol of a new era of asymmetric warfare, where innovative drone systems and high-tech solutions allow a non-nuclear nation to effectively challenge a nuclear power state.
But the expert is convinced: if Russia itself involves potential nuclear delivery systems in a conventional war, it forfeits its so-called nuclear immunity.
Moscow employs nuclear force components in its war effort. Russian dual-use systems, Iskander-M, Iskander-K, Kinzhal missiles, Su-24M, Su-34, and Tu-22M3 bombers, are regularly used with conventional warheads to strike targets in Ukraine.
“Ukraine is systematically destroying and will continue to destroy these systems on the battlefield, and there is no argument the West can make that undermines the logic of Ukraine’s actions,” says Izhak.
In such circumstances, Russia cannot expect that the mere nuclear potential of its systems will grant them any immunity.
According to him, Moscow has chosen a dangerous path, invoking nuclear weapons in rhetoric while actively using their delivery systems in a conventional war. But the war against Ukraine has proven these platforms are far from invulnerable.
It’s not just the strategic bombers that have proven to be large, exposed targets. Even mobile launchers like the Topol-M and Yars are barely protected.
For decades, the Kremlin justified its opposition to NATO expansion by claiming that non-nuclear missile deployments near Russian borders would undermine its nuclear security. But now, as Ukrainian drones and missiles destroy nuclear-capable delivery systems deep inside Russia, that argument is losing all credibility.
“NATO may expand or not — the new vulnerability of Russia’s nuclear forces will remain,” says Izhak.
At the same time, he stresses that no one would target Russia’s nuclear triad if it posed no threat. If Russia were to cease its aggression against Ukraine, it would no longer need its strategic arsenals.