Speaking to "Ukraina stuudio," Saks said: "This is a situation where Russia has lost a significant portion of its strategic nuclear deterrent. Russia had actually previously lost some of these strategic bombers — Ukraine has been able to destroy them before, but only single figures. But even those strikes were very significant. However, this current one is, for Russia, above all, a highly significant one on many fronts. In terms of air defense and military defense, as well as counterintelligence and the functioning of security services," Saks commented.

"Right now there is no sign that Russia has started to work systematically to bring the situation under control. It is just fully flailing," Saks added.

"Time will tell in the coming weeks whether Russia can still deploy its strategic air fleet, or what it will do with it come what may," he continued.

At the same time, according to Saks, a Beriev A-50 early warning aircraft was also hit, something which Russia only has in small numbers. "At present, Russia should have only two or three left of the five or six it had at the start of the war. That alone shows how devastating the strategic loss has been," Saks added.

Some of the other planes hit including the four-engined Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber can be used to deliver nuclear weapons, and have been used in conventional bombing against Ukraine.

According to Saks, nuclear deterrence consists of two components: One is actually having a functioning nuclear warhead with adequate delivery system, and the other relates to credible threat. Russia has taken a hit on the second of these aspects, Saks said. "That people believe a nuclear weapon is ready for use and that it works. That credibility has now been visibly damaged. And Russia now has to do something to restore that deterrence to the form it had before," he noted.

Saks said that in any case, preparing and executing an operation on the scale and impact it did on Sunday demonstrates Ukraine's exceptional capabilities in drone warfare and gives the lie to a narrative seen even in the western media that Russia is making progress and even on the brink of a potential breakthrough.

"Over the past six months, there's been an unjustified media narrative, to my mind, that Russia is about to achieve major success in the war. But instead, this has been a major setback for them — they are significantly losing their strategic deterrent capacity. It is a complete fiasco. It is not something which would break the fighting capacity of Russia's ground forces, but, psychologically, it certainly will have an effect. It will influence command, the general staff, operational capacity, and especially strategic planning over the long term. And most importantly – these aircraft are not being produced any more in Russia," Saks concluded.

According to Saks, a ballistic missile strike from Russia on Ukraine can now be expected as a reprisal.

Sunday's drone strike by Ukraine went deep into Russian territory, across three time zones, and damaged 40 Russian strategic bombers, including Tu-95 and Tupolev Tu-22M supersonic bomber, as noted by Saks — capabilities which Russia no longer produces.

While Ukraine had used drones to strike oil refineries in Russia before, this was the first time such an attack had hit strategic bombers – capable of delivering nuclear weapons – in large numbers.

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