Anger over drone attack shows Ukraine hit Russia where it hurt

For 18 months, Ukraine’s internal security service planned an audacious assault on far-flung Russian airfields – first sneaking drones into Russia, then planting them near key military runways.

On Sunday, just ahead of a new round of peace talks, it was go-time. Near five unsuspecting Russian military bases, remotely activated roofs lifted off mobile homes and sheds parked on flatbed trucks. Armed Ukrainian drones tucked inside soared upwards, then pounced on military aircraft lined up on the runways, engulfing many in flames.

The brazen attack – which Ukrainian officials claimed destroyed at least 13 Russian aircraft and damaged dozens of others – shocked Russia and instantly reduced its capabilities to threaten a nuclear attack or launch missile strikes on Ukraine and other countries.

Satellite image analysis showed destroyed and damaged aircraft at Belaya air base in Russia.Credit: Chris Biggers / Janes

It also served as a crucial reminder to Moscow and Ukraine’s Western partners that Kyiv remains capable of exploiting Russia’s weaknesses and disrupting its war plans, despite being outnumbered and outgunned.

Ukraine said the damaged or destroyed aircraft, some of which were nuclear-capable, included A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22 M3 and Tu-160 models – planes Kyiv said Russia had used nearly every night to bomb Ukraine.

Many details of how the attack was planned are not public, and it was not immediately clear how many of the Russian planes were operational at the time they were targeted.

But the swift, angry reactions in Russia confirmed that Ukraine had exploited, to devastating effect, an obvious vulnerability: essential and expensive aircraft left out in the open but believed safe because they were deep inside the country. The operation also marked the latest example of drone technology redefining modern warfare.

Russia and Ukraine met for a brief second round of direct talks in Istanbul on Monday, agreeing to swap dead and captured soldiers, but otherwise, there was no significant progress towards ending the gruelling war or even agreeing to a ceasefire.

Western analysts said Ukraine’s deep strikes would hinder Russia’s ability to launch cruise missiles into Ukraine and could force Russian commanders to shift significant resources to better protect aviation assets. But the analysts cautioned the strikes were unlikely to significantly alter the course of the war, as Moscow still has enough aircraft to continue bombing Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

Video footage and reactions published on social media showed that in Russia, the drone strikes stirred panic, confusion and then, from pro-war commentators, rage. Governors from several regions, including as far as Siberia, reported drone attacks. Russian onlookers filmed smoke billowing over the airfields and narrated their shock. Soon, pro-war military bloggers dubbed the attack “Russia’s Pearl Harbour”.

In videos that could not be independently verified by The Washington Post, people who appear to be locals living around the airbases recorded drones zooming past them and plumes of black smoke on the horizon. In one video, a woman watches a drone move towards a smouldering airbase as her neighbours suggest that it might be the 11th to fly by. In another, a man films as several drones fly out of a truck stationed on the side of a highway. A volley of gunfire can be heard in the background as security forces try to shoot the drones down.

In another, a young soldier, apparently stationed at another airbase, records several aircraft burning. Facing the camera, he uses an expletive to describe the scene. Enraged chief Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov later demanded that the soldier be shot for making the video and called him a “scumbag”.

Meanwhile, in Kyiv, the SBU, the Ukrainian security agency that planned the brazen strikes, publicly took credit and revealed the operation’s code name as Spider’s Web. President Volodymyr Zelensky quickly posted photos of himself hugging the agency head, Lieutenant-General Vasyl Maliuk, in celebration.

“The enemy thought that it could bomb Ukraine and kill Ukrainians with impunity and endlessly,” Maliuk said in a statement. “But this is not so. We will respond to Russian terror and destroy the enemy everywhere.”

Ukraine said all SBU operatives involved in the attack were evacuated safely from Russia before it began.

In Ukraine, the successful attack injected some much-needed optimism into a society beleaguered by more than three years of full-scale war and worn down by what many see as undue pressure from the United States to concede to Russian demands even without security guarantees.

“This operation completely changes the perception of reality – both within Russia and around the world. Our enemies are now forced to recognise that Ukrainian intelligence services are capable of penetrating even the most secure facilities,” Ukrainian member of parliament Roman Kostenko, who serves as the secretary of the national security committee, said.

“When the enemy loses dozens of strategic bombers, it’s not just a technical loss; it’s a blow to its ability to blackmail the world with missile strikes.”

Former Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine had transferred its Tu bombers to Moscow as part of its 1996 agreement to give up its nuclear capabilities in exchange for security guarantees from several countries, including Russia.

“On June 1, 2025, Ukraine began removing those very aircraft from one of the memorandum’s main guarantors. That guarantor had shamelessly used them against peaceful Ukrainians,” he said, describing Sunday’s attack as “a peculiar form of military-legal sanctions”.

‘The enemy thought that it could bomb Ukraine and kill Ukrainians with impunity and endlessly. But this is not so.’

Lieutenant-General Vasyl Maliuk, Ukrainian SBU security agency

One former Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive political moment, described the attack as providing an “immense inspirational push for Ukrainian society and soldiers” that he fears may inspire more resistance to a compromise that could lead to a real ceasefire.

“We’re less likely to compromise in the nearest future. And some form of a compromise seems to be the only way to stop [or] pause the war,” he said. Still, he added, the attack dramatically improved the SBU’s reputation and “deserves to be described in history books”.

Vulnerable aircraft

The vulnerability of aircraft had long been a point of criticism among Russian military bloggers, who had called for better defences, such as hardened cover and hangars, Samuel Bendett, a drone expert and adviser to the Russia studies program at the Centre for Naval Analyses in Washington, said.

Air defences on the bases were probably honed to detect bigger Ukrainian drones that operated at long ranges and were “probably not looking for FPV drones that literally snuck under the radar”, Bendett said. FPV drones are small aircraft guided by a pilot using a camera with a first-person view. A big question was how Russia would rebuild the bruised component of its nuclear arsenal, Bendett said.

Among the destroyed or damaged planes are aircraft that have been modernised but are no longer in production. It would not make sense to rebuild propeller-driven Tu-95s, Bendett said, though Russia had yet to acquire the next-generation bombers expected to replace them.

Another question is how Ukraine ultimately steered the drones. The sophistication of launching the drones one after another pointed to capabilities such as drones pre-programmed to fly towards their targets, analysts said.

Pilots might have been involved in the last stretch of the attack runs, Bendett said. In one video, a drone slowed down and hovered above the wings of a bomber, then targeted a vulnerable portion of the wing between the fuselage and the engine, he said. Such a precise attack is a hallmark of FPV drones, which carry relatively small payloads but pack a big punch by specifically targeting vehicle weak points.

Russian officials and state media, meanwhile, remained noticeably silent on the attacks.

According to Russian media outlet Agentsvo, Russian state broadcasters Channel One and Rossiya-1 each devoted 40 seconds of airtime to this unprecedented attack on distant Russian airbases. By Monday morning, the news had disappeared from news bulletins.

“The smartest thing Putin could do right now would be to not respond immediately,” Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian political scientist based in London, wrote. “Putin’s best response is to delay his response, which he is good at.

“Putin does not have many spectacular ‘good’ moves in the current situation.

“Ukraine has no comparable facilities that can be destroyed without infernal civilian casualties and enormous damage to the environment ... which would traumatise the already troubled [US President Donald] Trump.”

Russia’s TU-95 design first flew in 1952.Credit: AP

Pro-Kremlin military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, who runs the Rybar Telegram channel, said the attack would cause substantial “moral and psychological damage” and that Ukraine’s operation was aimed not only at exploiting gaps in defence but also at “creating colossal tension” in society and discrediting the Russian security services.

If Ukraine could attack airbases, he speculated, it could also attack highways and transport routes, stirring panic.

“Of course, from the point of view of undermining Russia’s military potential, this is an extremely unpleasant story, especially in the context of the loss of the Tu-95MS,” Zvinchuk said, referring to the mainstay of Russia’s fleet of nuclear bombers.

Russian opposition figures, meanwhile, marvelled online at Ukraine’s “amazing” and “crazy” operation.

“Everyone says that the only way to negotiate with Putin is to negotiate from a position of strength. Well, here it is,” Russian opposition politician and former political prisoner Ilya Yashin wrote on social media.

Yan Matveyev, a military analyst at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, described the attack as “a direct and highly sensitive blow to the nuclear triad” that destroyed “rare and expensive bombers”.

“Most importantly, it reduced the Russian Air Force’s ability to strike Ukrainian cities,” Matveyev wrote on Telegram.

Destroying or damaging an A-50 is a significant achievement for Ukraine. The aircraft, topped with a radar, is a flying command centre that helps co-ordinate Russian air attacks and detects incoming threats. Moscow has few in its inventory: one such plane was shot down with a Ukrainian Patriot air defence system last year.

The Washington Post

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