Russia has not officially confirmed or denied the four recent drone attacks on its early warning radar systems, which are vital to detect incoming ICBM attacks, let alone ascribed responsibility for those attacks. There is meanwhile a lively effort underway in the Western media to bolster the “narrative” that it is Ukraine alone that has made the decisions and carried out the attacks—and not a central NATO command.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear, in his responses during a press availability at the Tashkent airport on May 28, what Russia’s view is about NATO’s overall responsibility for the different kinds of attacks on Russia. He explained, in some technical detail, that “long-range precision weapons cannot be used without space-based reconnaissance.” The drones that were used against the radar sites are not long-range missiles, but Putin also addressed the matter of targeting. “The final target selection and what is known as launch mission can only be made by highly skilled specialists who rely on this reconnaissance data, technical reconnaissance data.… Launching other systems, such as ATACMS, for example, also relies on space reconnaissance data.”
