Zelensky’s ATACMS Gambit: Nuclear Red Alert or More Empty Provocations?
Submitted by Bob P
Guest Post by Simplicius
As could be expected, immediately upon receipt of “authorization” from Biden, Ukraine reportedly launched an ATACMS strike on the Russian 67th GRAU depot in Bryansk region.
The difference this time is the Russian MOD themselves officially announced the usage of 6 ATACMS, of which 5 they claim were shot down:
Another report claimed that Ukrainian official sources reported Russia only shot down 2 out of the 6. It’s difficult to believe shoot down claims from either side, as both regularly make up “shoot downs” to cover for successful strikes, but in this case we’ll see when the BDA satellite photos appear if there’s any real damage commensurate with more than one hit.
But first let’s get a few things straight. Multiple people have suggested the one clear video of the strike is in fact recycled footage, with claims that even NASA’s FIRMS map has refuted any large scale explosions took place:
I have not independently verified the FIRMS myself yet, but it’s true the other videos from the vicinity feature mostly explosive sounds but no similar fireball or plume as to the one main video—and it would seem to corroborate the Russian MOD’s words that “no damage” occurred in the strikes. In previous hits on larger Russian depots we had multiple videos of the gigantic explosion—so this one is a bit suspicious, although there are some other videos showing what appears to be secondaries exploding in the distance, though as always absolute verification is impossible.
There are other reports, like from the Wagner-affiliated Condottiero channel, which likewise corroborates that not much damage was actually done:
Condottiero
By the way, about Bryansk and the arsenal of the Russian Ministry of Defense. I will disappoint battle bloggers from both sides of the conflict. The arsenal and its main territory are not damaged.
Everything else is in the press release of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Lastly, even pro-UA accounts admit this arsenal houses old Soviet stock and has no direct relevance to the ongoing SMO.
What does that all mean?
That even if Ukraine did score a hit, it was once again nothing more than a ‘low hanging fruit’ PR job meant to strike an irrelevant backwater object for the same old purpose of getting up on the scoreboard and inflating the sudden narrative boost of “US solidarity”.
Remember, the last few attacks were fairly successful in blasting out huge chunks of these old Soviet depots in Tver and elsewhere, and what effect did that have? Russia’s current record offensive which is overrunning Ukrainian lines everywhere began literally right after the depots were destroyed—all while Western press assured us that “50% of all Russian Army’s ammo has been annihilated!”
They claimed it would cripple Russia and immediately sap its offensives, yet the total opposite happened. The current comparatively tiny strike will have even less effect on the ongoing hostilities.
That being said, Putin is still reacting with the seriousness of due diligence given the apparently confirmed nature of ATACMS use on Russian territory. As such, he again made headlines by ratifying the new nuclear doctrinal shifts.
The doctrine of course allows Russia to respond with nuclear use against overwhelming air attacks or attacks from a proxy aided in large part by a major nuclear adversary.
Three major things can be said about this situation:
The first is that doomers and pro-UA content mashers hyperfocus on Ukraine’s occasional inconsequential strikes while, as always, ignoring the monstrous daily strikes of equal or greater capacity that Russia doles out regularly. For instance, in the same span that this ATACMS strike occurred, Russia blew away two major enterprises with fireball plumes as large as the claimed 67th GRAU one, seen from miles away.
Critical infrastructure and facilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Zaporozhye are under attack by the Russian Armed Forces TG channels report a massive raid by “Geraniya”.
The head of the OVA Fedorov reports on the casualties.
Local sources write about the lack of water and heating in some areas.
Ostashko reports
And today as of this writing another swift retaliation:
And the day before that there were massive strikes on Odessa which crippled several large enterprises; that’s not even counting the “biggest of the war” strikes on Ukraine’s energy grids. So as you can see, Russia levies daily what Ukraine is able to do once a month, or even a season. It’s just par for the course in terms of Russian strikes, yet doomers will have us focus on the one rarity that Ukraine is able to slip by.
The second thing.
Ukraine’s choice to use its very scarce remaining ATACMS stockpiles on some useless Soviet depot with no connection to the SMO is very telling. It once again reveals that Ukraine has no hope of actually winning the war kinetically and does not even bother trying to use the ATACMS against actual useful targets in the field. Instead, Zelensky deliberately chooses some defenseless backwater ‘showpiece’ to make a headline splash because an old Soviet stockpile will create the largest visible mushroom cloud to wow observers, while having no appreciable effect. The ATACMS could have been used somewhere on the front to devastate Russian assault groups, or echelon C2 headquarters, etc.
The British Sunday Times says Ukraine has as few as 50 ATACMS missiles, so if 6 are being utilized against pointless objects it again reaffirms everything we’ve known about Zelensky’s remaining strategic impulse.
From a previous article:
The third and most important thing.
Though Putin had to make some escalatory show, it’s more realistic to expect Russia not to react in any overt way until Trump’s term settles in. Putin is aware that an outgoing senile despot who doesn’t care if the world burns behind him may seek to start WWIII, and that Zelensky may see his final two months’ chance to provoke Russia into overreacting. As such, it’s best for Russia to do nothing, and continue grinding the offensives which are destroying Ukrainian lines everywhere.
Putin had to put on a show of signing the decree only because Russia can’t sit back and allow a red line to be crossed with no overt signal or posture change at all—that would simply be imprudent. So Putin made the minimal necessary move to signal Russia’s warnings just to keep a consistent line on things, but unless Zelensky continues with a more provocative strike, I don’t expect Russia to react too much. By provocative, I mean hitting some actual ‘strategically’ important objective, or near a nuclear plant—something along those lines.
Russia merely has to wait two months for Trump to potentially roll Biden’s dementia-riddled policies back. Of course, Trump could keep or even expand the provocations, as we’ve written about many times—no one knows for sure which direction Trump will go, but at least there’s a chance it won’t be the dangerous one.
In fact, the attack seems to have the flavor of another secret backdoor exchange, i.e. allowing Ukraine to hit an object known to be an inert, irrelevant Soviet depot to superficially satisfy the neocon warhawk crowd without incurring too much of Russia’s wrath. In support of this theory are rumors that the Biden administration has refrained from ‘allowing’ UK—and by extension France—from giving Ukraine a similar go-ahead to strike Russia with Storm Shadow/Scalps. It seems as always, they’re deftly tiptoeing around the fine line.
Anyway, speaking of the French missiles:
France has a limited number of long-range Scalp missiles that it could transfer to Ukraine, writes the French newspaper Le Monde.
Paris has so far delivered only 10 missiles out of the 40 promised.
Think about it this way, according to Zelensky and official Ukrainian government statistics, Russia has launched over 6000-7000 total missiles at Ukraine during the war thus far, and one can see Ukraine is still kicking. But Russia—vastly larger and more resourceful than Ukraine—is supposed to be battered by 50 ATACMS and 10 French missiles? Give me a break—it’s just fodder for the chuds. Ukraine will continue getting methodically deconstructed with no delay.
Lastly, with all this ‘nuclear chicken’ and talks of WWIII now ripening, it’s worth mentioning the infamous 2025 Deagle Report is looking more and more interesting. I say it half in jest, since I never bought into this odd internet marginalia and curiosity in one, but perhaps it’s something to think about.
On that note, Ukraine continues taking massive losses of both man, materiel, and territory.
For the former-most, see: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3. Though a graphic warning is due.
Progress continues on almost every front. Successes in Kupyansk, Terny, Toretsk, Selidove-Pokrovsk, Chasov Yar, and Kursk. Ukraine did have a couple small successful counter-attacks, for instance retaking Makarovka just recently captured by Russian forces, south of Velyka Novosilka; albeit, the nearby Rovnopol was subsequently captured by Russia today:
Most notable breakthroughs came in Chasov Yar and Kurakhove, as always.
In Kurakhove, Berestky has reportedly been almost entirely captured—even more than the map below shows. And assault forces progressed through the city of Kurakhove itself—yellow arrow—also reportedly further than the below indicates:
Sontsovka is likewise almost fully captured and Ukrainian reports from the town indicate the situation is absolutely critical, which means Russian forces may soon be able to breakthrough south of it to begin cutting Kurakhove off for good.
The whole southern basin below Kurakhove is also being cleaned up with tons of new territory in the open fields captured.
Meanwhile, another HIMARS truck was eliminated by the Lancet system:
Last major news that you’re hearing here for the first time:
A couple months back, you may recall World Bank announced that as per their calculations, Russia had finally surpassed both Germany and Japan in GDP PPP. However, the official IMF and CIA figures still scoffed at this, with Russia trailing both countries on their counts. This allowed the popular narrative to be maintained that the World Bank figures were some kind of inaccurate fluke or anomaly.
Well, the IMF has just done their latest report and has officially concluded that Russia has blown past both Germany and Japan as of 2024, and is now the number four economy in the world. And not only that, but the IMF has Russia in the lead by an even larger margin than World Bank. On top of which, the CIA also updated their numbers and likewise reflects Russia at the number four position.
Link to IMF’s full report of October, 2024. (click “download full report”).
That means it’s official—every global institution of note has now validated that Russia is the number four economy in the world, after only China, US, and India. The most remarkable shift is that according to the IMF’s updated numbers, the Russian economy is now 15% larger than the German one when it felt like only recently that Russia had even officially surpassed Germany.
The truth is, Germany and the EU are in absolute free fall, while Russia is experiencing an unprecedented economic boom.
Given that wages have skyrocketed dozens of percentage points in the past two years, my personal estimate is that the true Russian GDP figures are being hidden and they’re even higher than the current “official” global institutions suggest.
It’s why the West can’t seem to understand why Russians aren’t suffering and seething in agony:
Last few programmatic items:
The majority of Ukrainians now support ending the war as soon as possible according to viral new poll:
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Strange video from the Russian energy strikes last night. Russian missiles targeted the Kremenchug hydroelectric dam, but two of the missiles can be seen coming short and hitting the water, while a third slams into the structure accurately:
We’ve seen that before long ago with some commenting that Russia is deliberately targeting the water near the dam to create some kind of concussive shockwave effect to damage structures underneath; but I’m not convinced, though it’s hard to say for certain. Are some Russian missiles lacking in CEP accuracy? Or is this a deliberate strike at some dam structure just below the surface I’m not aware of?
Interesting that the one which hits accurately comes from a different direction, as if to imply it’s a different missile type fired by another platform; i.e. perhaps a Kh-59 fired from a fighter-bomber craft rather than a Kalibr/Kh-101, or something to that effect.
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Jake Sullivan again articulates that Ukrainians must fight and die to the last Ukrainian—note the heavy-handed pressure toward mobilizing everyone, not to mention blaming the war’s loss on Zelensky’s lack of total societal mobilization:
That’s not to mention the humiliating admission that US F-16s and Abrams made no difference whatsoever on the battlefield, contrary to all early hoopla.
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Zelensky says if the US cuts funding, then “Ukraine will lose.”
“We have our own production but it’s not enough to survive.”
Well, it seems the ball’s in Trump’s court then.
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Then we turn to Starmer who is a must-see emblem of dead-eyed globalist vacuity, as he robotically implies the extinction of all British citizens is worth it to support Ukraine:
He makes it clearer than ever to see just how captured these inhuman globalist puppets are—they have no sovereignty nor soul, just dead husks of skin masquerading in a bad Kabuki, monotoning the same bad stump speeches and rehearsed scripts for their masters.
