WARSAW, Poland — Ukrainian forces have the right to target munitions depots in Russia, according to a senior government adviser who made the case for such operations while denying Ukraine’s responsibility for an explosion in Russia this week.
“We could do it, for sure, but … that arsenal is very close to the city of Belgorod, and there are a lot of civilians in that city. … This is not our way of fighting this war,” Ukraine’s Oleksandr V. Danilyuk told the Washington Examiner. “Despite the horrible things conducted by Russians to Ukrainian cities and people … we are not like them.”
That denial contradicted an initial wave of reports that characterized a large explosion, widely viewed on social media, as the handiwork of Ukrainian missile forces. Ukraine doesn’t have the “long-range missiles” necessary to conduct such strikes on key facilities in Russia, according to Danilyuk, but he emphasized that the facilities closer to the border are not immune to Ukrainian attacks.
“Not this one because it was too close to Russian civilians, but of course we will try to destroy their capabilities,” he said. “It’s enormous, but anyhow, especially those arsenals and those storages which are on our borders — they are our targets for sure.”
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Those attacks could take the form of cross-border raids by Ukrainian special forces teams rather than missile strikes.
“We have Russian Iskanders attacking Ukrainian cities from operational depth in Belarus and Russia,” he said. “And unfortunately, we have no long-range missiles to attack them, but we still have our [special forces] troops, which we could use to send there to find the Iskander missiles and to destroy them. And it’s up to the general staff and to the supreme commander to decide.”
Yet Danilyuk, who has helped coordinate NATO-Ukraine operations to counter Russian “hybrid war” operations, ventured to make the case for taking the fight to the Russian forces that have done the most damage, such as the pilots responsible for airstrikes throughout the country. He suggested that “it seems unfair that these people who are probably the most responsible for what’s going on in Ukraine” come through the conflict unscathed in comparison to the forces tasked with seizing control of Ukrainian territory.
“I think it should be changed somehow, and that’s why I would send our [special forces] troops to Belarus and Russia, but again, as I know, it’s not what we do right now,” he said.
The explosion in the Belgorod region, he suggested, is the fault of the Russians themselves — perhaps even by corrupt military leaders.
“It’s a great opportunity for the Russian military leadership to hide their crimes, including stealing weapons and ammunition and equipment before … [to] sell it on the black market, which is again very normal for them,” he alleged. “And from this point of view, we will see more and more accidents, and they will obviously try to convince — to accuse Ukrainians [of] conducting that operation. Of course, some of them will be conducted by us.”
Yet Danilyuk was also willing to accept Russian media reports that the explosion was the result of an accident.
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“It was absolutely a brilliant example that Russians are a threat to themselves and the rest of the world,” he said. “They are just stupid monkeys who have no idea how to just operate with even [just] conventional ammunition.”
