Drone attack sends critical message to Russia - and the West

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r1jv0rn0ko Ukraine's audacious drone attack sends critical message to Russia - and the West 15 hours ago Paul Adams, Diplomatic correspondent BBC News https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/ff71/live/6b72dc60-3f18-11f0-a71b-b300e9306d09.jpg.webp It's hard to exaggerate the sheer audacity - or ingenuity - that went into Ukraine's countrywide assault on Russia's air force. We cannot possibly verify Ukrainian claims that the attacks resulted in $7bn (£5.2bn) of damage, but it's clear that "Operation Spider's Web" was, at the very least, a spectacular propaganda coup. Ukrainians are already comparing it with other notable military successes since Russia's full-scale invasion, including the sinking of the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, and the bombing of the Kerch Bridge, both in 2022, as well as a missile attack on Sevastopol harbour the following year. Judging by details leaked to the media by Ukraine's military intelligence, the SBU, the latest operation is the most elaborate achievement so far. In an operation said to have taken 18 months to prepare, scores of small drones were smuggled into Russia, stored in special compartments aboard freight trucks, driven to at least four separate locations, thousands of miles apart, and launched remotely towards nearby airbases.… https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ld7ppre9vo Ukraine drones strike bombers during major attack in Russia 2 hours ago Monday June 2, 2025 Paul Adams Diplomatic correspondent;Jaroslav Lukiv BBC News Ukraine says it completed its biggest long-range attack of the war with Russia on Sunday, after using smuggled drones to launch a series of major strikes on at least 40 Russian warplanes at four military bases. President Volodymyr Zelensky said 117 drones were used in the so-called "Spider's Web" operation by the SBU security service, striking "34% of [Russia's] strategic cruise missile carriers". SBU sources told BBC News it took a year-and-a-half to organise the strikes. Russia confirmed Ukrainian attacks in five regions, calling them a "terrorist act". The attacks come as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are heading to Istanbul, Turkey, for a second round of peace talks on Monday. Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian government's centre for counteracting disinformation, said at least 13 Russian aircraft were destroyed and others damaged. The talks are expected to start around 13:00 local time (10:00 GMT) at the Ciragan Palace. Expectations are low, as the two warring sides remain far apart on how to end the war. Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities reported a massive drone and missile attack on its territory over the weekend. At least six people, including a seven-year-old child, were injured following a strike in Kharkiv in the early hours of Monday, the region's governor said. Elsewhere, Russia's state news agency Ria said the country's security service thwarted an attempted arson attack in the east. It said two residents in the Primorye region were attempting to sabotage a railway track on Ukraine's orders. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014. • Ukraine's audacious drone attack sends critical message to Russia - and the West SBU sources earlier told BBC News Sunday's attack involved drones hidden in wooden mobile cabins, with remotely operated roofs on trucks, brought near the airbases and then fired "at the right time". In several posts on social media late on Sunday, Zelensky said he congratulated SBU head Vasyl Maliuk with the "absolutely brilliant result" of the operation. He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot. "The most interesting thing - and we can already say this publicly - is that the 'office' of our operation on Russian territory was located right next to the FSB of Russia in one of their regions," the Ukrainian president said. The FSB is Russia's powerful state security service. Zelensky also said that all the people involved in the operation had been safely "led away" from Russia before the strikes. The SBU estimated the damage to Russia's strategic aviation was worth about $7bn (£5bn), promising to unveil more details soon. The Ukrainian claims have not been independently verified. Sources in the SBU earlier on Sunday told the BBC in a statement that four Russian airbases - two of which are thousands of miles from Ukraine - were hit: • Belaya in Irkutsk oblast (region), Siberia • Olenya in Murmansk oblast, Russia's extreme north-west • Dyagilevo in central Ryazan oblast • Ivanovo in central Ivanovo oblast The SBU sources said that among the hit Russian aircraft were strategic nuclear capable bombers called Tu-95 and Tu-22M3, as well as A-50 early warning warplanes. They described the whole operation as "extremely complex logistically". "The SBU first smuggled FPV drones into Russia, followed later by mobile wooden cabins. Once on Russian territory, the drones were hidden under the roofs of these cabins, which had been placed on cargo vehicles," the sources said. "At the right moment, the roofs were remotely opened, and the drones took off to strike the Russian bombers." Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev confirmed drones that attacked the Belaya military base in Sredniy, Siberia, were launched from a truck. Kobzev posted on Telegram to say that the launch site had been secured and there was no threat to life. Russian media outlets have also reported that other attacks were similarly started with drones emerging from the lorries. One user is heard saying that the drones were flying out of a Kamaz truck near a petrol station. Russian media were reporting the attack in Murmansk but said air defences were working. The attack in Irkutsk was also being reported. A screenshot from footage released by Ukraine purportedly showing a drone attack on Russian warplanes In a post on social media later on Sunday, the Russian defence ministry confirmed that airbases in the country's five regions were attack. It claimed that "all attacks were repelled" on military airbases in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions. The latter base was not mentioned by the SBU sources. In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, "several aircraft caught fire" after drones were launched from nearby areas, the ministry said. It said all the blazes were extinguished and there were no casualties. "Some of the participants in the terrorist attacks have been detained," it added. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/cb18/live/87a629b0-3f76-11f0-bace-e1270fc31f5e.jpg.webp Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities say 472 drones and seven ballistic and cruise missiles were involved in a wave of attacks on Ukraine last night. This would appear to be one of the largest single Russian drone attacks so far. Ukraine says it "neutralised" 385 aerial targets. In a separate development, Ukraine's land forces said 12 of its military personnel were killed and more than 60 injured in a Russian missile strike on a training centre. Ukraine's head of land forces, Maj Gen Mykhailo Drapatyi, tendered his resignation shortly afterwards. He said his decision was "dictated by my personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy". https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7zjy89304o At least seven dead after two Russian bridges collapse 23 hours ago June 1, 2025 Anna Lamche & Thomas Mackintosh BBC News … Video: Footage shows attack drones homing in on their targets as they sit on the tarmac. "No intelligence operation in the world has done anything like this before," defence analyst Serhii Kuzan told Ukrainian TV. "These strategic bombers are capable of launching long-range strikes against us," he said. "There are only 120 of them and we struck 40. That's an incredible figure." It is hard to assess the damage, but Ukrainian military blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko says that even if the bombers, and command and control aircraft were not destroyed, the impact is enormous. "The extent of the damage is such that the Russian military-industrial complex, in its current state, is unlikely to be able to restore them in the near future," he wrote on his Telegram channel. The strategic missile-carrying bombers in question, the Tu-95, Tu-22, and Tu-160 are, he said, no longer in production. Repairing them will be difficult, replacing them impossible. The loss of the supersonic Tu-160, he said, would be especially keenly felt. "Today, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost not just two of their rarest aircraft, but truly two unicorns in the herd," he wrote. Beyond the physical damage, which may or may not be as great as analysts here are assessing, Operation Spider's Web sends another critical message, not just to Russia but also to Ukraine's western allies. My colleague Svyatoslav Khomenko, writing for the BBC Ukrainian Service website, recalls a recent encounter with a government official in Kyiv. The official was frustrated. "The biggest problem," the official told Svyatoslav, "is that the Americans have convinced themselves we've already lost the war. And from that assumption everything else follows." Ukrainian defence journalist Illia Ponomarenko, posting on X, puts it another way, with a pointed reference to President Volodymyr Zelensky's infamous Oval office encounter with Donald Trump. "This is what happens when a proud nation under attack doesn't listen to all those: 'Ukraine has only six months left'. 'You have no cards'. 'Just surrender for peace, Russia cannot lose'." a tweet from the quarterly Business Ukraine journal, which proudly proclaimed "It turns out Ukraine does have some cards after all. Today Zelensky played the King of Drones." This, then, is the message Ukrainian delegates carry as they arrive in Istanbul for a fresh round of ceasefire negotiations with representatives from the Kremlin: Ukraine is still in the fight. The Americans "begin acting as if their role is to negotiate for us the softest possible terms of surrender," the government official told Svyatoslav Khomenko. "And then they're offended when we don't thank them. But of course we don't – because we don't believe we've been defeated." Despite Russia's slow, inexorable advance through the battlefields of the Donbas, Ukraine is telling Russia, and the Trump administration, not to dismiss Kyiv's prospects so easily.