Putin Ally Says Ukraine Operation ‘Grounds for Nuclear Attack’

Ukraine’s audacious targeting of major Russian airbases is “grounds for a nuclear attack,” a prominent Kremlin propagandist and ally of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said.

Why It Matters

Ukraine launched simultaneous attacks on multiple Russian airfields on Sunday in an operation dubbed “Spiderweb,” which Kyiv officials said was more than a year and a half in the making.

Ukraine’s SBU security service said it had struck four major Russian air bases, largely housing the country’s long-range aviation fleet used to carry out extensive strikes on Ukraine and capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, made up of strategic weapons designed to target distant cities and tactical, or nonstrategic, weapons. These are also known as tactical nuclear weapons, designed to be less destructive.

Russia’s government reported attacks on five bases including the Ukrainka long-range hub in the far eastern Amur region, which Kyiv did not explicitly mention and declined to clarify when approached for comment.

The region’s governor said part of a truck had “caught fire” close to the village of Seryshevo, but denied the Ukrainka air base was targeted by drones. The Ukrainka base sits just outside of Seryshevo, and Ukraine said the drones were smuggled over the border into Russia and mounted on trucks with removable roofs.

While the purported damage may not halt Russia’s extensive aerial campaigns against Ukraine, the strikes have left a painful dent in a branch of the Russian military that had been largely unscathed by more than three years of war in Ukraine.

It is likely Russia will retaliate with significant force, former SBU officer Ivan Stupak previously told Newsweek. The strikes came ahead of a second round of peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, which failed to yield concrete progress toward a deal but did produce a new agreement on prisoner swaps.

What To Know

Sunday’s coordinated attacks are “grounds for a nuclear attack,” Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russia’s most well-known propagandists and state commentators, said in remarks reported by Ukrainian media.

The TV presenter has repeatedly pushed nuclear weapons into Russian discourse around the more than three years of war in Ukraine, and has floated the idea of a nuclear strike on NATO countries.

Shortly after Ukraine launched an incursion across the border into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024, Solovyov claimed the Kremlin had the “basis to start a nuclear war.”

Putin placed the country’s nuclear deterrence forces on high alert as Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and the Kremlin’s veteran Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a few months later that the risks of nuclear conflict had become “considerable.”

Moscow updated its nuclear doctrine in November 2024 to justify a nuclear strike in response to an attack on Russia by a nonnuclear country if they are backed by a nuclear-armed nation.

Solovyov also called for the Russian soldiers who filmed the aftermath of Sunday’s attacks to be executed, according to a translation published by the Russian Media Monitor project, run by journalist Julia Davis.

In an ominous statement penned to “all who are worried and waiting for retribution,” Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and the current deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said on Tuesday: “You need to worry.”

“Retribution is inevitable,” he added in a post to messaging app Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—who had deemed the operation “brilliant”—said on Monday that “no one cares whether Russia is angry,” adding Moscow had launched a “massive overnight attack” on Ukraine into the early hours of Sunday.

Ukraine’s air force said at the time that Russia had fired 472 attack drones, three hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles and four cruise missiles at the country between Saturday evening and early Sunday.

Early on Tuesday, Zelensky said Russia had launched a “savage” rocket artillery strike on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy overnight. Local authorities said at least three people had been killed and more than 20 injured.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday it had attacked Ukrainian troops in villages northeast of the city of Sumy and captured the village of Andriivka. This could not be independently verified.

What People Are Saying

The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said on Monday that Moscow has upped its ground attacks around Andriivka.

Russia is “intensifying efforts to widen the frontline” in the north of Sumy, to the north and northeast of the regional capital, the think tank added.

What Happens Next

Solovyov separately said it was “clear that there will be an escalation” after the strikes, but it would be up to Russia’s leadership to “determine the scale of it.”