Many Western allies are so fearful of how Russia could respond to an escalation with Ukraine that they won’t allow certain donated weapon systems to be used further inside Russia.

Faced with the unending prospect of having to fight this war in a pair of golden handcuffs, Kyiv has decided to test Moscow’s limits by doing two things: invading Russia and developing its own fleet of ballistic missiles.

These tactics are being used because Ukraine wants to break the political logjam in Washington before November’s election and tackle what it views as the somewhat stagnant position by the Kremlin. 

Ukraine is ultimately testing just how firm Moscow’s so-called red lines are.

Vladimir Putin has clearly dusted off the old Soviet ideas around information operations and psychological warfare, a collection of theories started in the 1960s, and better known as “reflexive control”. 

Study your enemy, break down their biases, understand the stimuli to which your adversary will have an automatic, Pavlovian, response, and then feed them exactly those incentives. 

The Kremlin knows what policymakers in the West are (rightly) afraid of, so it ensures scenarios of nuclear armageddon are fed into the public domain with such regularity it becomes impossible to judge what is a bluff and what could be of genuine concern.

When Putin feels the heat, he reaches for the Soviet reflexive control handbook and feeds us another doom-laden prophecy of nuclear incineration. 

Up until now, Western policy shifts have largely gone hand in hand with the nature of the equipment gifted: tanks, artillery, and long-range precision missiles. 

Now, Ukraine has developed technology out of kilter with the West’s timeframe management. This could mean, say, Britain pushes a policy change to test where the lines are now. But if one Nato or Western partner shifts position without taking allies with them, Putin will ruthlessly exploit any diplomatic gap. 

It would have been better if the first Russia had known about a domestically produced ballistic missile had been when things started to get hit. By announcing it publicly, it suggests President Zelensky is frustrated at the red-line charades, and there is, perhaps, even a hint of desperation to get the limits shifted. 

So, will Ukraine’s actions on the battlefield and its own ballistic capabilities break the cycle of reflexive control and free Western policymakers from the tyranny of the emperor’s new red lines? Or is it too late?

In this episode of Defence in Depth, Dominic Nicholls, associate editor at The Telegraph, looks at how Ukraine is pushing Russia’s red lines.

Watch Dominic’s video analysis above. Find more episodes of Defence in Depth on The Telegraph’s YouTube channel.