The Kyiv regime’s drone attack on Russia’s Armavir early warning radar station is an extremely dangerous provocation because of its potential for triggering a nuclear strike in response. Russia’s nuclear doctrine, “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence,” promulgated and signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2020, lists among other things an “attack by adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions,” as a condition for responding with nuclear weapons.
In view of the Russian doctrine, the U.S. is using the Kyiv regime as a proxy to blind Russia in preparation for a nuclear first strike, or is working to force Moscow itself to respond with nuclear strikes. Russia’s early warning radars have nothing to do with the Russian special military operation against Ukraine, so there is no possible tactical reason for strikes on the Armavir radar. “Ukraine is now carrying out the slow de-arming and neutralization of Russia’s nuclear triad on behalf of NATO, which is an extremely existentially dangerous position for Russia to be in,” wrote Simplicius, who despite the pseudonym often posts sober analyses of the Russia-Ukraine war, in a May 24 posting on his Substack site, “Simplicius the Thinker,” immediately after quoting that paragraph from Russia’s nuclear doctrine. “Thus, Russia is now within its doctrinal rights to respond with nuclear retaliatory force—and Ukraine is just beginning its escalations.”
