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“Ukraine says it has 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… [The] 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’… 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.” BBC
Here’s our most recent coverage of Ukraine. The Flip Side
Both sides are concerned about the risk of a similar strike against the US:
“Ukraine’s Security Service smuggled more than a hundred drones into Russia. They hid them under the roofs of mobile wooden cabins in a process that took months. Then all at once, simultaneously, with no warning, the cabin roofs were opened via remote control, and then the drones flew off to do their thing… [The] bomber planes Ukraine just torched are not only equipped to carry regular missiles, they also can carry nuclear warheads…
“If you are Russia, the United States or any country with nuclear weapons, your national security policies are based around the fact that you have an impenetrable nuclear deterrent. Why would anyone attack you if you could then retaliate by blowing them off the map with your nuclear stockpile? But Ukraine just disabled a primary piece of Russia’s nuclear arsenal with devices that look like they came from RadioShack… Sunday’s strike [has] really important strategic consequences for every country that thinks of itself as having a nuclear deterrent.”
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
“China has several ships, operated by Chinese military companies, that regularly sit in American ports. These ships could plausibly feature containerized drones, of the sort that Ukraine just launched against Russia, to hold at risk US military assets critical to projecting power across the western Pacific. This is to say nothing of anti-ship or even land-attack missiles that could impede US military forces earmarked to defend the Asia-Pacific status quo…
“This scenario might indeed still be unlikely at the outset of a Taiwan contingency. Beijing, after all, would be concerned about needlessly escalating a Sino-American war, especially if its regional military operations were achieving results… China now has theater-range missiles that can conduct precision nuclear strikes and hold Guam at risk to induce Washington to back down. Still, it would be imprudent for American policymakers to ignore that the general threat to the US homeland is growing.”
Kyle Balzer, American Enterprise Institute
Other opinions below.
“It was not long ago that Donald Trump berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, sneering that he had ‘no cards’ and attempting to bully him into accepting intolerable conditions for an end to the conflict. But Trump vastly underestimated Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president knew about Operation Spiderweb at that time, but he kept what cards he did have close and chose not to disclose any of it to the White House or the Pentagon. The details might have made their way onto an unsecured Signal chat, after all.”
Jay Kuo, Status Kuo
“The attack showed how much audacity, ingenuity, and effectiveness the Ukrainians can bring to their own defense when Western leaders aren’t pressuring them to hold back… The Tu-95s are literally irreplaceable: Russia has no production facilities making more of these aircraft, and it has not yet designed a successor to the model… The total cost of Russian losses likely runs into several billion dollars…
“In contrast, the cost of one of the Ukrainian drones used in yesterday’s attack has been estimated at about $1,200—so that even if the airfields were attacked with 100 drones each (a seemingly high estimate), the total cost of the drones used would have been less than $1 million. I struggle to think of a recent military operation where one side suffered so much damage at so little cost to the other.”
Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic
“With the drone attack against Russia’s aviation fleet, Ukraine is showing Trump that it can use its wits and scrappiness to keep fighting; its cause is not lost. Kyiv also signaled to Trump and Ukraine’s European allies that, though Ukraine might be outmanned and outgunned, it still has the capacity to inflict considerable damage on Russia’s military and cannot be ignored in any negotiations.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“The Russo-Ukraine war has developed into a war of attrition since the failure of Russia’s dash for the Ukrainian capital in early 2022, resembling the trench warfare of World War I… In wars of attrition, the side with the larger economy almost always wins out in the end. Russia’s GDP is about 10 times larger than Ukraine’s, and it’s been patently clear for years now that Ukraine is kept afloat only by the mountain of foreign aid provided by the West…
“The development and utilization of new drone technology may give Ukraine a tactical edge in the short term… but no amount of wonder weapons can change the fundamentals of war: industrial capacity and manpower…
“[Moreover] underestimating Russian resolve often proves a catastrophic mistake. It didn’t work out for Napoleon, and it didn’t work out for Hitler. Russia has proven time and again its willingness to endure massive casualties and embarrassing setbacks to achieve its goals.”
Hayden Daniel, The Federalist
Others argue, “To the extent that Sunday’s raids might upset Trump and empower those around him who are especially hostile to Ukraine, they come at a risk. But to argue that the targeting of assets that are bombing Ukrainian targets should be avoided because it is escalatory is the same thing as saying that self-defense itself is escalatory…
“Reducing the number of [strikes coming from Russia] seems a good day’s work in and of itself, as does the blow to Russian morale and the demonstration of capability to allies… Showing the Russians that their continued prosecution of the war risks painful ongoing costs should plausibly contribute to greater Russian seriousness in the diplomatic process. Ideally, such efforts would be coordinated with robust American support.”
Aaron MacLean, Free Press
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