Ukraine War Cold War Missiles ‘Brinkmanship’ Shift US-UK ‘Limited to North Korea Stationing’
The Ukraine War shifted from ground warfare to Cold War missile ‘brinkmanship’ tactics between the US and the US, and the US and UK, which provided missiles, agreed to ‘limit the North Korean military stationing area’
The Cold War system’s missile competition and air defense network tests, which threatened the opposing system, led to a three-year ground war in Ukraine, where long-range missile threats began.
For two days, Ukraine fired long-range missiles provided by the US and UK at military targets in Russia, and Russian President Putin said that Russia’s missile tests were in response to the Ukrainian airstrikes.
Russian President Putin said that Russia had test-fired medium-range missiles designed to carry nuclear weapons from its arsenal.
In a speech on the 23rd, Ukrainian President Zelensky said that Putin had set the time for the attack on the 22nd, ahead of the upcoming US presidential inauguration. President Zelensky said of President Putin, “I am convinced that he wants to push us out by January 20,” and “It is very important that he shows that he is in control of the situation.”
The Royal United Services Institute, a military analysis group linked to the British military, reported on the situation in Ukraine that “despite the new [missile] strike against Russia, Ukraine is rapidly approaching a point where it will have difficulty defending the length of the front unless it solves its manpower problem,” the New York Times reported.
The war in Ukraine is now showing that Ukraine is limited in its supply of troops, and “without more troops, the collapse of the battle position will accelerate,” experts analyzed.
The US and UK have limited the use of missiles to “areas where North Korean troops are stationed” in the transition to missile warfare, and “Western countries have cited this as a justification for allowing Ukraine to attack Russia using American ballistic missiles called ATACMs, saying that the deployment of combat troops from third countries means heightening tensions in Moscow.”
The New York Times reported on the 23rd that “the agreement is limited to areas where North Korean troops are stationed, and Britain has quickly authorized the launch of Storm Shadow cruise missiles at Russia,” and that “neither the American missiles that Ukraine recently received permission to launch against Russia nor the experimental missiles that Russia returned are capable of being used in quantities sufficient to have a significant military effect, and that they were authorized for use ‘limited to North Korean military garrison areas.’”
The next day, Ukraine fired at areas ‘informed of North Korean military garrison locations,’ and announced to the press that a “North Korean general was injured,” but did not go through an official confirmation process. The New York Times reported that “long-range missile duels have been conducted in conjunction with frontline combat, but with little noticeable impact on the ground, they appear to serve a political rather than a military purpose,” and that “Ukraine is hoping for a military advantage that will serve as leverage in ceasefire negotiations.”
Russia has been escalating its nuclear threat before President-elect Trump takes office in January, and Trump has expressed skepticism about continuing U.S. military support for Ukraine, suggesting a strategy of “mediating peace in war.”
The Ukrainian military intelligence agency HUR provided details of Russia’s new missile on the 22nd.
The New York Times reported that, based on Ukrainian analysis, “it flew at about 11 times the speed of sound, released six warheads before impact, breaking into 36 smaller submunitions, and its flight time from the Russian city of Astrakhan to Dnipro was about 15 minutes,” and that “the weapon had one capability, mainly associated with nuclear-armed missiles, and the ability to release multiple smaller warheads, lighting up the early morning sky over Dnipro where it landed.”
It was not clear from the attack on the 21st whether each warhead could be targeted individually, and the smaller warheads are known to be MIRVs or multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. Ukrainian analysts told the Times that the aftermath of the strike was “negligible.”
Roman Kostenko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense and intelligence committee, told the Times on Tuesday that Ukrainian authorities were investigating whether the missile was carrying only a dummy warhead, and that if a nuclear warhead exploded, it would have detonated with minimal force.
In the interview with the Times, Kostenko pointed to a photo showing a crater created by the blast, which he said was about 5 feet wide and covered in foliage, with no other visible damage nearby. “That small crater suggests the object hit the ground with force, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it exploded,” he told the Times. “A 2-pound high-explosive bomb would create a similar crater, and if the missile was really fired for nothing, we should understand it as a purely demonstrative attack with no real military purpose.”
Ukraine does not have an air defense system capable of intercepting such a missile, and shortly after the launch, President Zelensky said on the 21st that the Defense Minister had asked Western partners for additional systems to counter future attacks.
The U.S. missiles that Ukraine allowed to fire at Russia “forced Russia to move its aircraft from airfields near the Russian border, and could help deter a Russian offensive in the Kursk region,” he said. “But Ukraine has too few ATACMS to cause significant damage to Russian military supplies near the border, some military analysts say.”
The U.S. has provided Ukraine with hundreds of ATACMs, and some estimates put the current stockpile at 100. The remaining missiles appear to be too few to be used in an actual attack.
Colonel Serhiy Hrabskiy, a war commentator for Ukrainian media, told the Times that “the United States cannot provide us with the quantity we need,” and that “the calculations that these missiles will have any impact on the war do not add up at this point.”
Kostenko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, added that “Ukraine has no choice but to continue to fight despite the threat of nuclear war implied by the Russian missile launches,” adding that “Ukraine will not change its approach to fighting, including counterattacking Russian targets in self-defense.”
The New York Times reported on the Russian hypersonic missile launch, saying, “Video footage shows low-lying clouds over the city glowing for a split second before dozens of glowing warheads plummet from the sky,” and “A roar unlike anything the war-weary population had ever heard echoed through the streets of Dnipro, a city of about 1 million people in central Ukraine.”