Did they actually do it or is it a last minute face save given that at least the footage above seems to be from days ago?
I'd wait for satellite confirmation. Also curious what the end result of the Dnipro strikes as well. From what I hear it's a kinetic kill vehicle weapon(?)
The black and white video showing the missile strikes seems legit. Notice the speed of those things going in and the plasma cloud of the reentry vehicles. That colored video with the cruise missiles though seems to have been from last year's X-101 cruise missile strike on Dnipro or something.
Russia clearly wants to prevent the country from being turned into a testing ground for Western weapons, but I believe that the escalation will continue to increase. Meanwhile, the danger of escalation now is that Russia sees the West in the war, and may also turn Europe into a testing ground.
What makes you think the next step will be Russia striking Europe? It could be they will attack the US bases spread out all over the world. Using proxies or without proxies. Remember what happened to France and its uranium mines on Niger after they started providing the Storm Shadow/SCALP EG to Ukraine. But yes they could strike a NATO country or several eventually. Which is why I keep saying the West doesn't know what they are doing by enabling deep strikes into Russian territory.
As a sidenote, I'd like to remind everybody that New START expires in a little over a year. Perhaps Russia already has bigger things prepared in the pipeline and is getting rid of old stock?
The Russians have a lot of expired or near expired missiles which would cost actual money to decommission. It is much cheaper to just dump them on Ukraine.
As for New START, right now Russia takes some Satan missiles out of service every time a new Yars battalion goes online, they could simply either not do that or start inducing Sarmat simultaneously, thus increasing their amount of launch vehicles. They could also start producing IRBMs.
Remember that RS-26 Rubezh development was frozen after testing was supposedly complete. The money was channeled to fund development of the Avangard RV. But RS-26 Rubezh was never actually cancelled, it was delayed, back then to 2027. It might be moved forward again.
