When the Untouchable Becomes a Target: Ukraine’s Challenge to Russia’s Nuclear Posture

Ukraine has taken the unprecedented step of launching conventional strikes against components of Russia’s strategic nuclear infrastructure—targeting bases for strategic bombers, radar installations, and command facilities. These actions were not prompted by fears of an imminent nuclear attack, but by the use of these assets in conventional warfare—specifically, Russia’s ongoing bombardment of Ukrainian civilian targets. In this context, Ukraine views such infrastructure as legitimate military objectives. Its strikes, therefore, are not only tactically sound, but strategically justified.

Psychological and Political Pressure on Putin

These attacks have placed President Vladimir Putin in a deeply uncomfortable position. He has long cultivated an image of strength and strategic dominance, underpinned by Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Now, Ukraine’s actions challenge both that posture and the deterrence value of his nuclear triad. The psychological pressure to respond is immense—but so is the risk. Putin appears to be weighing his options carefully, seeking reassurances that any retaliation will not provoke a Western response that could spiral into a broader conflict.

In this context, former U.S. President Donald Trump—whose signals often carry weight in Moscow—has emerged as a key point of reference. Following a reported phone call between Putin and Trump, it became evident that the U.S. would not immediately impose harsh retaliatory sanctions on Russia’s response to Ukraine’s strikes. Trump’s implicit message: the nuclear powers camaraderie matters for him. This speaks volumes about the gap between Western rhetoric and actual red lines when it comes to Russia.

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The Strategic Impact

Ukraine’s strikes have reportedly damaged up to one-third of Russia’s strategic aviation—an essential pillar of its nuclear triad. Given the aging nature of much of Russia’s Soviet-era infrastructure, these losses are not easily repaired or replaced. The symbolic and operational consequences are significant. While Washington has quickly distanced itself from Kyiv’s actions, the strategic disruption is undeniable.

A Crisis of Perceptions

What is harder to explain is the discomfort some in the West express—not over Russia’s use of nuclear infrastructure in conventional warfare, but over Ukraine’s decision to strike back. There remains a deep-rooted attachment to the sacred mythology of nuclear “parity”—a belief that any challenge to the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) risks destabilizing the entire global order. Yet this discomfort ignores a critical reality: Russia has already blurred the lines between nuclear deterrence and conventional aggression. Ukraine is simply responding to that reality—with clarity, courage, and increasing effectiveness.

Pressed to the wall, Ukraine has taken a bold step in dismantling one of the most deeply entrenched assumptions in global security: that nuclear powers are untouchable. With precision strikes—using drones, missiles, and coordinated deep-penetration operations—Ukraine has exposed the vulnerability of Russia’s strategic infrastructure. This challenges not just Moscow’s military posture, but the broader belief in the inviolability of nuclear deterrence and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

From Kyiv’s perspective, the rationale is simple: Russia’s strategic aviation is actively used to bomb Ukrainian cities. Since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has wielded its nuclear arsenal not as a tool of last resort but as a political shield—dissuading the West from providing Ukraine with the kind of support that could ensure decisive victory. This nuclear umbrella has allowed Russia to conduct conventional aggression with relative impunity.

Western leaders, particularly in Washington, have consistently voiced fears of nuclear escalation. Under both the Biden and Trump administrations, this fear has shaped aid packages and limited strategic support. The result: Ukraine has received just enough to hold the line, but never enough to decisively repel Russian forces.

Meanwhile, many of the missiles targeting Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other cities are launched from strategic bombers stationed deep inside Russian territory. For Ukraine, these are not theoretical components of a nuclear triad—they are real, operational nodes in a war of annihilation.

Deterrence Without Teeth?

Moscow has repeatedly warned of “severe consequences” if Ukraine strikes Russian territory or strategic assets. Yet, when Ukraine conducted operations near and even inside Russia’s Kursk region, those threats rang hollow. The Kremlin’s inability to leverage nuclear deterrence to prevent or respond to these attacks raises a critical question: What is the actual utility of nuclear weapons if they cannot protect national territory or deter conventional retaliation?

The question is not whether Ukraine seeks to disarm Russia’s nuclear arsenal. It does not. Rather, Ukraine is demonstrating that nuclear weapons—when used to support offensive conventional warfare—are no longer sacrosanct.

Ukraine’s approach is deliberate and clear-eyed. Its strikes serve several purposes:

• To expose Russia’s vulnerability deep within its own borders.
• To degrade Moscow’s ability to conduct long-range strikes via strategic aviation.
• To show the world that Ukraine can act independently, using asymmetric tools, even without direct Western assistance.

These are not reckless provocations. They are part of a rational strategy to shift the battlefield dynamic—and to force the international community to confront the contradictions of nuclear deterrence in the context of modern conventional war.

Reclaiming the Strategic Narrative

Rather than undermining global stability, Ukraine’s actions shine a harsh light on a dangerous double standard: that nuclear powers can hide behind their arsenals while waging conventional wars with impunity. Kyiv is challenging that premise—not to provoke escalation, but to defend itself.

In doing so, it is rewriting the rules of modern warfare and revealing the fragility of long-held nuclear assumptions. The era of unquestioned nuclear invincibility may be ending—not through catastrophe, but through the cold calculus of conventional resistance.

A New Reality: Innovation vs. Nuclear Might

The war in Ukraine is reshaping the global understanding of power and deterrence. Despite not possessing nuclear weapons, Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to strike hundreds of kilometers into Russian territory using drones, missiles, and deep-strike operations. What Ukraine lacks in nuclear force, it compensates for with innovation and precision.

Just as Ukraine forced Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to retreat from occupied Crimea to safer ports in Novorossiysk, its strikes on strategic aviation bases have exposed vulnerabilities in Russia’s nuclear posture. Reports indicate that Tu-160 bombers have been redeployed to bases near the Alaska—an implicit recognition that they are no longer secure.

Western restrictions persist, with the U.S. and its allies continuing to limit Ukraine’s access to advanced systems, such as long-range air-to-air missiles, that would enable strikes on Russian aircraft within Russian airspace. This constraint forces Ukraine into a lopsided fight, like a boxer with one hand tied. Yet, through resourceful and asymmetric tactics, Ukraine has reshaped the battlefield, upending entrenched notions of strategic stability and challenging the arrogance of nuclear superpowers.

Who Undermines Strategic Stability?

Russia’s reaction follows a familiar script: ominous warnings and assertions that Ukraine is endangering “strategic parity.” General Keith Kellogg, an advisor to Donald Trump, has echoed this narrative, warning that Ukraine’s strikes could undermine the foundations of nuclear deterrence and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Yet the real threat to global stability does not come from Ukraine’s precision drones, but from Russia’s instrumentalization of its nuclear triad as a tool of coercion—leveraged not for deterrence, but to extract concessions at the negotiating table.

The belief that a nuclear power cannot lose a conventional war has already been disproven—Vietnam and Afghanistan are enduring examples. Yet Russia clings to the notion that nuclear status entitles it to win any conflict, regardless of the means.

There are still concerns that Putin could consider a limited nuclear strike to restore the aura of Russian deterrence and force the West into retreat. But such an act would cast him irrevocably as a pariah—a “madman” in the global order. It would not end Ukraine’s resistance, which is grounded in existential self-defense. Instead, it would crystallize the conflict into a defining moment for the international system.

A New Paradigm in Warfare

Ukraine’s strategy is not to provoke nuclear escalation—it is to reject nuclear blackmail as a basis for surrender. The idea that a nuclear power has an inherent right to win a conventional war, or dictate the terms of peace through threats, is both morally bankrupt and strategically corrosive.

What Ukraine is doing is exposing a deeper truth: in an age of precision warfare, nuclear arsenals are no longer untouchable. The illusion of absolute deterrence is fading. Strategic concepts must adapt to a world where conventional tools can strike what was once inviolable.

This is not just Ukraine’s fight. The broader question is whether the world will defend the principle of self-defense—or allow nuclear states to trample that principle under the guise of preserving “strategic stability.” What is truly at stake is not just the outcome of one war, but the rules of global order for decades to come.

Ilian Vassilev