Ukraine attacks Russian air bases in far-reaching drone strikes
Ukraine attacks Russian air bases in far-reaching drone strikes
Drones smuggled into Russia hit bases as far away as Siberia and the far east, destroying 41 aircraft that carry cruise missiles and detect enemy planes, said a Ukrainian official.
Updated
June 1, 2025 at 7:01 p.m. EDTtoday at 7:01 p.m. EDT
7 min2711
By Francesca Ebel,
David L. Stern and
On the eve of bilateral peace talks in Istanbul, Ukraine’s security services launched a massive drone attackagainst five air bases insideRussia, officials in both countries said Sunday, in one of the most penetrating assaults of Russian territoryby Ukrainian forces since the war began.
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The Security Service of Ukraine claimed responsibility for the attack, which saw Ukrainian drones smuggled into Russia before striking strategic airfields in remote areas, including Siberia, for the first time.
President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the assault as “brilliant” and “perfectly prepared.” He said Ukraine used 117 drones to take more than a third of Russia’s cruise missile carriers and had safely transported those who helped with the attacks out of Russia before the strikes began.
“These are Ukrainian actions that will definitely be in history textbooks,” he wrote on Telegram on Sunday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry called the operation a “terrorist attack” and confirmed in a statement published by Russian state newswires that airfields had been attacked by drones in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions. “Several units of aircraft caught fire,” the statement read.
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Russian warplanes carry out daily attacks on Ukrainian cities, and Kyiv has long lamented that it has been unable to thwart such bombardments, in part because its partners have imposed restrictions on using Western-supplied weapons for deep strikes inside Russia. The operation Sunday demonstrated that Ukraine has in the meantime found a way to deploy its own weapons to reach previously unattainable targets.
According to a Ukrainian intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, Kyiv conducted the operation, code-named “Spiderweb,” using “first person view” (FPV) drones armed with explosives that were smuggled into Russia andconcealed inside trucks and beneath the roofs of houses. Those sites were then remotely opened, the official said, allowing the drones to fly up and attack their targets.
The operation was prepared for over 18 months “under the personal supervision” of Zelensky, the official said. Video filmed by a Ukrainian reconnaissance aircraft and shared by Ukraine’s security services appeared to show one Russian airfield in flames and drones attacking several planes.
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