The Ukrainian army has once again crossed a Kremlin red line by firing in the Bryansk border region, located just under 400 kilometers southwest of Moscow. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (which does not specify that it used this type of long-range weaponry), its attack hit a Russian military installation. The Russian Defense Ministry maintains that five missiles were intercepted and another damaged. This is the first time that it is known that kyiv uses long-range Western missiles to strike inside Russian territory, a line that the Kremlin highlighted as the Rubicon to take for granted the involvement of the United States in a war that has turned a thousand days old this Tuesday. .
“Today, at 3.25 pm, the enemy attacked an installation in the Bryansk region. According to confirmed data, they used American-made ATACMS operational tactical missiles,” the Russian Defense Ministry announced in a statement. “The fragments [del cohete dañado] They fell on the perimeter of a military installation and caused a fire that was quickly extinguished. There are no victims or damage,” Moscow assured.
The Ukrainian news agency RBC-Ukraine cites a source from the Ukrainian army who assures that these missiles have been used for the first time to attack Russian territory, specifically at a military facility in Karachev, located about 130 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and who have achieved their goal. “The attack was successful,” asserts the Ukrainian media.
The Russian news channel Astra has published on Telegram several images and videos of the alleged bombing at the facilities of the 67th Arsenal of the Main Directorate of Missiles and Artillery of Russia. The videos, which could not be verified, show an intense fire in the dead of night accompanied by a prolonged loop of explosions, supposedly coming from ammunition stored in the arsenal.
“The neighbors say the siren has been sounding since two in the morning, but there was nowhere to hide,” adds Astra. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the area’s defenses had long-range S-400 and short-range Pantsir anti-aircraft systems.
“I have no doubt that our army has the situation under control,” responded Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, when asked about the attack at midday. The Kremlin, which at that time claimed not to have any data, at the same time published the presidential decree by which the new Russian nuclear doctrine comes into force this Tuesday.
The document, which includes the guidelines to follow for the “nuclear deterrence” of other powers, specifies that any attack perpetrated against Russia by a country that does not have nuclear weapons, but that has the support of a third State that has this arsenal, it will be considered joint aggression by both nations.
The US media published on November 17 that the outgoing US Government of Joe Biden would also use its missiles on Russian territory. One day later, Putin, whose red lines have been crossed in the past, declared in September that an ATACMS attack “will mean that NATO countries, the US and European countries, are at war with Russia.”
The American newspaper The New York Times claims that Washington limited the use of ATACMS to the front of the Russian Kursk region. kyiv launched an offensive in the province in August to inflict a reputational blow on Putin and force him to divert troops from other areas of eastern Ukraine. The president stated in September that he would “recover the lost territory”, but he maintained his army on the other fronts while asking North Korea for help.
Washington and kyiv expect an imminent Russian counteroffensive in the region. “It is likely that about 11,000 North Korean soldiers have moved to Kursk,” Pentagon deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh declared this Monday.
