Ukrainian Attack on Russian Strategic Bombers Raises Level of Risk: US Envoy

A massive Ukrainian drone attack on military airbases inside Russia has caused increased risk, Keith Kellogg, U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, has said.

“I’m telling you, the risk levels are going way up,” Kellogg told Fox News on June 3. “I mean, what happened this weekend.”

On June 1, Ukraine carried out wide-ranging drone strikes on military airfields in northern and eastern Russia, striking targets up to 2,670 miles from the front line.

According to Russia’s Ministry of Defence, the attacks targeted airfields in the regions of Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur.

In a statement cited by Russia’s TASS news agency, the ministry said most attacks were repelled, but conceded that several aircraft had been set ablaze. No personnel, civilian or military, were injured or killed, the ministry said.

The ministry said that several suspects were detained, without elaborating.

Satellite imagery has suggested that some Russian strategic bombers, able to carry nuclear payloads, were severely damaged—if not destroyed—by the attacks.

Moscow has yet to confirm whether the targeted aircraft were nuclear-capable.

Kellogg said the attack increased the risk of nuclear war.

“People have to understand in the national security space: When you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their triad, the nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side is going to do. You’re not sure,” he told Fox News.

A nuclear triad relies on strategic bombers, land-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles to deliver a potential second strike in a nuclear exchange.

Russia and the United States together account for almost 90 percent of the global stockpile of nuclear weapons.

On June 4, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow would do “everything that must be done” to identify the perpetrators of the attack.

His comment came in response to a reporter’s question about whether Moscow sought help from Astana following reports that a suspect had fled to Kazakhstan.

At a press briefing one day earlier, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that Trump had not been told in advance about the impending Ukrainian attack on the Russian airfields.

When asked whether Trump approved of Ukraine’s decision to “strike nuclear-capable bombers in Russia,” Leavitt said, “I would like to let the president speak on that himself.”

Reuters contributed to this report.