Before we start, here is actual footage of me as soon as Yom Kippur ended:
I was not planning on returning until tomorrow evening, however, a few of you have reached out to ask what is going on with the reports about armored vehicles from Russia’s nuclear forces being on the move. Apparently, some of the self declared OSINT people on social media – both those using their own names and those using pseudonyms – got a hold of some imagery, decided the trucks were from Russia’s 12th GUMO, which is the unit that provides security for Russia’s nuclear arsenal, and off to the races they went. Fortunately for you all I know who to check to see what is really going on.
Bill Moon is a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and he is quote tweeting Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists:
If these are 12th GUMO response force assets, it would indicate a desperate need for weaponry. It could mean Russia is reducing/suspending regularly scheduled warhead maint. shipments. Response forces are stationed along routes, not regularly part of convoys-CTR equipped convoys. https://t.co/OPPPQcnIzI
— Bill Moon (@WilliamMMoon) October 5, 2022
Here’s Korda’s two tweet thread:
Always willing to be wrong of course, but the implication that “Russia is moving warheads to Ukraine” is a *very* strong claim and at this stage the available evidence doesn’t back it up.
— Matt Korda (@mattkorda) October 3, 2022
Here’s Mark Galeotti of RUSI quote tweeting Jeffrey Lewis from the Middlebury Institute who is responding to the same tweet that Korda was. Lewis is one of the top non-proliferation subject matter experts around.
A useful corrective from @ArmsControlWonk to the rather breathless 'Putin's nuclear convoy' stories – there's no reason to think these necessarily are 12th GUMO (nuke security) vehicles, there's no warhead transport car… https://t.co/QByYwXC3xk
— Mark Galeotti (@MarkGaleotti) October 4, 2022
The rest of Lewis’s thread after the jump: