Russia Nibbles at Ukraine's Nuclear Energy in Signal After ATACMS Authorization
Never mind the "Oreshnik" red herring, this is the real warning
November 28 saw the second major Russian strike on energy infrastructure in ten days involving 90 missiles. Before November there had only ever been 7 strikes involving 90 or more missiles in the entire war, now a 2-week period saw 2. The combined 347 missiles the Russian strategic campaign expended in November is also a record. The previous monthly high was 281 way back in December 2022. (All according to Ukrainian data.)
More to the point, the latest strike, in addition to forcing Ukraine’s nuclear reactors to temporarily dial down like the last one already did, also forced one to be disconnected from the grid entirely.
In reporting on it The New York Times exaggerates the event as “Russia Moves to Cut Off Ukraine’s Nuclear Plants”. In reality, the nuclear part was just a small subset of the strike that primarily targeted thermal power and transmission around the country. Had Russia really wanted to cut off Ukraine’s nuclear reactors it could have made them the focus of the strike.
So then what this really was is a signal: “Look at what we can do to nuclear with X missiles, what if the next time we aim the entire salvo of 90?” In the previous “signal” the Russians already dismantled Ukraine’s thermal power generation over the spring and summer.
On November 18 the White House announced that US-enabled ATACMS strikes would expand from Crimea and Donbass to western Russia. Russia’s reply has been two-pronged, with the media focusing on the part that is sexier but empty, but oblivious to the actually substantial part — the signaling against nuclear power.
The Oreshnik stuff is mildly interesting. So the Russians have a new missile that is difficult to intercept. Okay great, so what? It’s not as if they are going to fire it at NATO, or as if the US doesn’t have missiles it can fire back. Or as if Putin likewise didn’t already have thousands of other impressive missiles before Oreshnik.
Putin giving the lowdown on Oreshnik reminded me of him giving an equally dramatic presentation on no fewer than six new Russian strategic weapons in March 2018. That obviously did not give NATO pause, or there wouldn’t be a Russia-NATO war right now, so he must know that Oreshnik won’t have an impact on enemy capitals this time either.
But it is a strategic weapon and it never hurts to talk about those, because enemy media will not fail to report on it and elevate anxiety levels of citizen casuals who do not know that nobody is flinging fancy missiles at NATO in a conflict that literally still has Moscow paying gas transit fees to Kiev. More to the point, Putin’s own casual “calm majority” in Russia might be reassured that he is out there parrying the West with their tax rubles and Russian technological prowess and keeping them defended for the time being.
The nuclear doctrine stuff isn’t interesting at all. The changes are technical. They don’t lower the use threshold but merely spell out an additional scenario at the same threshold not previously considered. They were proposed a year ago, were greenlit months ago, and just needed to finish going through the formal process of adoption. Putin’s signing of the amendments took place on a regular schedule and wasn’t even ever claimed by Russia as part of response to Biden’s long strike.
Nuclear escalation is the last thing on Moscow’s mind. What it’s really searching for is a way to retaliate horizontally. To inflict pain in the very same ways the US is bleeding Russia in Ukraine. Not as revenge but to exact a price on the US for frustrating its war in Ukraine so as to deter even more interference. But here’s the problem — at the moment the US doesn’t have a similar pain point.
Russia’s military is stuck in a costly and difficult war. America’s isn’t. The picture would be much different if the US had 15,000 troops right now in a hostile Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan, but it doesn’t.
Short of having the US somewhere in the world in a similarly precarious situation, there just isn’t a way for Moscow to hit at the US and not make its already difficult job in Ukraine harder. What can Putin do that would not result in DC interfering with his Ukraine campaign even more?
Putin has said Russia now has the right to strike US military facilities if it so chooses. And sure, Russia can theoretically find a US base somewhere to blow up. The problem with that isn’t nuclear. The problem isn’t even that Putin would lose a couple of Russian bases in retaliation. The problem comes when Washington then announces it is spinning up a new loitering munitions factory in Texas solely to supply Kiev and make his attack utterly counter-productive to having an easier way in Ukraine.
Now if the Americans were still in Afghanistan and they knew that weapons for Ukraine would lead to weapons for the Taliban then maybe you have real leverage (the State Department would still want to arm Ukraine, but the Pentagon maybe not so much) — but that’s not where we are.
In truth then, Putin doesn’t have good escalation options against the US. But what gets overlooked are his escalation options against Ukraine. He has two that would be incredibly consequential. One is to mobilize and swell his ground force. That comes with all kinds of domestic implications that he has been desperate to avoid. But ending nuclear power generation in Ukraine does not. Especially if American ATACMS take out a power station or a refinery in Russia first.
So then why are there still lights on in Ukraine?
Because Biden on November 18 crossed Putin’s line formally but not in substance. On September 12 Putin said the expansion of ATACMS into western Russia would constitute the US entering the fight against Russia directly and would trigger the “appropriate response”.
The missiles that hit the Russian ammo depot in Bryansk and the command center in Kursk met this criteria so Putin introduced the Oreshnik, and for all we know ordered the appropriate response of sending some missiles to the Houthis and telling the GRU to ramp up their shenanigans in Europe. So a promise kept and a tit-for-tat. (As much as possible without Americans in Afghanistan.)
But what Biden didn’t do is send any new missiles, or okay strikes vs energy. The White House framed its decision as Ukraine suffering a manpower shortage and urgently needing any form of boost to hold onto Kursk, especially in light of Russia’s North Korean reinforcements. Perhaps this is how the move was sold to Biden or how he rationalized it to himself.
But that’s not actually what any supporters of the expanded long-range strike want. Bolstering the sagging tactical situation with what remains of Ukraine’s depleted ATACMS stock isn’t what it’s about. It’s all about the strategic-economic campaign.
What the advocates of long-range strike into western Russia have always been after, is a large missile campaign against Russian economic targets, especially energy. Or at least a large campaign against Russian air defences, to carve out corridors for Ukrainian-built (and US-funded) long-range drones to energy targets.
This would be done to set back the Russian foe economically, to test the firmness of the Putin’s regime, and/or to force Putin to abandon his own strategic campaign vs Ukraine in a deal.
This would require not just the authorization of November 18, but also the transfer of great volumes of missiles to Kiev. Volumes that probably can’t be achieved by ATACMS transfers alone and would have to be accompanied by other missiles.
The sign that a true infrastructure strike campaign was in the works would probably be an announcement that the US is transferring JASSM and/or Tomahawk.
And so in advance of this happening and in an attempt to prevent it Putin is tickling Ukrainian NPPs. Forget about the Oreshnik, that’s for TV. This is the real signaling. The real warning.
Those who want the US to engineer a “Ukrainian” strike campaign vs energy in Russia, will understand precisely what him taking the gentlest of nibbles at Ukraine’s nuclear energy means.
They won’t pay the price. But mayhap Ukraine will.
With de-electrification.
With the humanitarian and all other crises that would entail.
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PS.: I’ve been digging and a strike two years ago under “General Armageddon” actually physically disconnected and shut down one of the NPPs, so it’s definitely within Russian power to do:
Surovikin lives up to his nickname.
Why has it taken so long? What about all the bridges on the Dnpier? Or concrete factories that would of been used to make fortifications? What about cutting of the gas supply that runs through Ukraine from Russia to Europe? Why not take out Zelensky? Why not recruit more men rather than scraping from the barrel with criminals and then perform a proper Blitzkrieg and perhaps open up a second front rather than relying on North Korea? That way actually less Slavs on both sides would die as if the enemy got truly enveloped then they would be forced to surrender. That is how you fight properly.
Petit botox Put(a)in is writing the final chapters of Russian history, just like Gorby did before him with the USSR.
Is extinction the fate of the Russian ethnicity and Putin "the rat" their undertaker?
It sure looks like that.