Ukraine’s Air Force spotted 11 Tu-95MS strategic bombers in Russian airspace at around 5 a.m. on Aug. 26. In less than three hours, Ukraine was under the largest aerial attack since the start of the full-scale war, with 127 missiles and 109 drones flying into Ukraine.
To attack Ukrainian cities far from the front, the Kremlin uses strategic bombers and fighter jets stationed deep inside Russia, along with ground launchers closer to the border.
With a U.S. ban on missile strikes deep inside Russia still in place, to minimize Russia’s capacity to launch mass attacks, Ukraine is forced to employ domestically produced drones to target airfields and launch sites.
Oh yeah, I’m accepting the frame as a rhetorical device. The frame is bullshit.
It’s pretty clear that they worry way more about escalation than we do (which is why they talk about it all the time). The way to approach this is to call their bluff in tiny increments, slowly slicing the salami until TLAMs are pounding factories near Moscow.
Factories, refineries, oligarchs dachas, yeah pretty much.