A drone attack on 900km from the war zones a few days after the OK given to Kiev come on NATO countries to use Western short-range weapons to hit the Russian bases across the border from which attacks originate Kharkiv. The Ukrainian armed forces conducted it against a military airport in North Ossetia, Russian territory. It is reported by theUkrainska Pravdaaccording to which Kiev launched an attack with for the first time today drones against North Ossetia-Alania, about 900 km from the front line in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region. The governor of the region, Sergii Minyailo, said that 3 drones were shot down in Mozdokwhich hosts a military airport from where Russian bombers and MiGs attacking Ukraine take off.
“This is a work planned by Ukrainian intelligence and a successful application of improved national means,” confirmed a source from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Kiev Defense Ministry (GUR), specifying that it was the first attack on Mozdok airport. “The enemy’s military facilities, which are involved in Russia’s genocidal war against Ukrainians, should not be safe,” the source noted.
The Moscow Defense Ministry also reported that during the night 25 drones were destroyed in the southern regions of Russia Kuban And Astrakhanin the western region of Tula and in the peninsula of Crimea annexed to Moscow. Pro-Russian officials administering the partially occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson And Luhansk reported that the Ukrainian attacks resulted in the deaths of at least 27 people. A Ukrainian raid on Friday in the small town of Sadove in the partially occupied Kherson region killed 22 people and wounded 15, the pro-Russian governor, Vladimir Saldo, said.
Further east, Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-installed governor of the partially occupied Luhansk region, said two more bodies had been pulled from the rubble following themissile attack Ukrainian attack on Friday on the regional capital, bringing the death toll to 5. Pasechnik also said 60 people were injured in the attack.
Kiev, for its part, announced that Russian forces launched attacks against Ukraine during the night 13 kamikaze drones, 9 of which were shot down by air defenses, the Air Force announced, adding that the only cruise missile launched from Moscow was also destroyed. The drones and the missile, a Kh-59, were neutralized in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
On the international front the United States they start raising their voices again. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association, a group that advocates limits on nuclear weapons, Pranay Vaddisenior director of the National Security Council, said Washington may be forced to expand its atomic arsenal if the nuclear strategy of China and Russia does not change. “Absent a change in the trajectory of the adversary arsenal, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from the current number of deployed units will be necessary, and we must be fully prepared to execute it if the President makes this decision,” said Vaddi, as reported by the New York Times.
For now, the United States stands modernizing, not expanding its nuclear arsenal, the senior official stressed, adding that Washington is prepared to pursue arms control agreements to reduce nuclear threats by “limiting and shaping” adversaries’ nuclear forces, Vaddi said. However, Russia’s refusal to negotiate a nuclear arms control agreement after the current one – the NewStart – has “cast a shadow” on diplomatic issues, Vaddi noted. According to which the development of B61-13 gravity bomb – a nuclear weapon intended for use against large, hardened military targets – is an example of the type of projects the US would pursue in the absence of a change in Russia and China’s nuclear strategy.
Vardi’s words, comments the Nyt, represent the most explicit public warning yet that the United States is ready to move from simply modernizing its arsenal to expanding it. As well as being a warning to the Russian president Vladimir Putin on the probable reaction of the United States if the New Start expires in February 2026 without being replaced. There have been no talks with Russia since it invaded Ukraine to negotiate a replacement deal for the New Start, which limits each country to 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons deployedthe kind that can be launched from one continent to another.
