Kyiv claims to have hit enemy airbases with a barrage of drones smuggled into Russia in an operation overseen by President Zelensky that took 18 months to plan
Catherine Philp and Tom Parfitt
June 1, 2025
The Times
President Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was not two years old when planning began for what would become Kyiv’s most audacious attack on Russian strategic aviation.
President Biden was still in the White House and supplying Kyiv with Patriot air defence batteries to combat Moscow’s vastly superior bomber capacity. However, amid slackening support on Capitol Hill and an increasing barrage of Russian long-range missiles on Ukraine, intelligence chiefs in Kyiv had decided that it was time to develop a domestic solution.
Home-produced Ukrainian drones have massively increased their range in the year and a half since “Operation Spider’s Web” was conceived, but the furthest that they had struck until Sunday was Murmansk, in Russia’s Arctic northwest, 1,100 miles from Ukraine’s border, hit for the first time last summer. To strike all the bases where Russia houses its long-range nuclear-capable strategic bombers would require a range of 2,600 miles. The drones would have to be launched in Russia.
Operation Spider’s Web, which was 18 months in the making, was so secret that it was overseen directly by President Zelensky. It was under the control of Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the Ukrainian security service, the SBU.
Hundreds of domestically produced first-person view drones were smuggled across the border into Russia and packed into pallets inside wooden transport containers with remotely controlled lids. The containers packed with drones, photographs of which appeared in Ukrainian media after the strikes, were loaded on to lorries and taken to hidden locations where they could be launched.
“At the right moment, the roofs of the cabins were opened remotely and the drones flew to hit Russian bombers,” an intelligence source told the Kyiv Independent. In a statement, the SBU said at least 41 long-range bombers had been damaged or destroyed, making up 34 per cent of Russia’s strategic bombers.
Ukrainian social media erupted in memes celebrating the attack, including artificial intelligence-generated images of swarms of drones flying from the body of a wooden Trojan horse.
The first reports of the strikes came from pro-Kremlin Russian military bloggers who posted video of long-range bombers in flames at an airbase in Siberia. “It’s the first attack of this sort in Siberia,” Igor Kobzev, the governor of Irkutsk, said, calling on the population not to panic.
While the Kremlin insisted little damage had been done, the highly symbolic raid demonstrated Kyiv’s ability to strike deep into enemy territory on the eve of ceasefire talks resuming on Monday in Istanbul. It also served as evidence of Kyiv’s domestic development of attack drone technology to compensate for a lack of long-range missiles provided by western allies.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it was conducting a “thorough investigation” into the attacks, the results of which would be “made public in the near future”.
Zelensky praised the “perfectly prepared” operation, which he claimed was run out of a building located near an office of the Federal Security Service, Russia’s principle security service. “We can say with confidence that this is an absolutely unique operation,” he said in statement on social media, adding that 117 drones were used on Sunday, hitting “34 per cent of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers”.
The audacious drone raid also took place 29 years to the day that Ukraine physically handed over to Russia dozens of the same strategic bombers, along with 1,500-2,000 strategic nuclear warheads and 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles, giving up the arsenal inherited from the USSR’s collapse in exchange, under the Budapest memorandum, for a promise not to be attacked.
Nine decommissioned Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3s, nuclear-capable bombers built in the 1950s, were kept in the Poltava Museum of Long-Range and Strategic Aviation, a former airbase from which the last bombers were removed in 2006. It was those ageing bombers that Ukrainian intelligence used to train AI targeting algorithms for Operation Spider’s Web. The drones were programmed to hit the bombers’ fuel tanks as they sat on the tarmac.
The Russian Tu-95s and Tu-22s that were targeted on Sunday are used to fire at Ukraine but are no longer manufactured, so cannot be replaced.
At least five Russian strategic airbases were struck: Olenya in the Arctic region of Murmansk; Dyagilevo in western Russia; Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow; Podmoskovye in Moscow; and Belaya in Irkutsk, Siberia, 2,600 miles from the front lines in Ukraine.
Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at St Andrews University and a leading analyst of the conflict, called the raid “the most remarkable and successful operation of the war so far”. He said: “This is a big blow to Russian strategic air power, which is hard to overestimate. We do not know what the Russian reaction will be, however, we can assume it will be violent and destructive.”
Ukrainian security sources said that President Trump’s administration had not been informed before the mission, which came as Washington grew impatient with Kyiv and Moscow for failing to find a way to end the three-year war.
Even without the drone raid, there were few signs that Putin is prepared to back down without Kyiv’s total capitulation. Zelensky, meanwhile, has balked at Moscow’s demands for peace talks without a ceasefire. Both parties are expected to present their terms for peace in Turkey on Monday, if they choose to attend.
The strike on Belaya was the first to be reported by pro-Kremlin Russian military bloggers, accompanied by a video showing aircraft in flames. They included A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 long-range strategic bombers.
Even before Ukraine announced the operation, Russian Telegram channels were reporting that the drones had been launched from lorries near airfields, a claim later confirmed by Kobzev.
The Telegram channel Baza, which is closely linked to the Russian security services, reported that the driver of one of the lorries in the Murmansk region had been detained. Baza speculated that he may not have known the cargo he was carrying. Witnesses said the drones were released while the lorry was at a petrol station outside the city on the Kola Peninsula, home to Russia’s core strategic nuclear arsenal.
SBU officials say the personnel responsible for preparing and transporting the drones to Russia were already back in Ukraine and any arrest claims by the Russian authorities would be “another staged performance for the domestic audience”.
The Tu-95MS is considered Russia’s “nuclear workhorse” as well as the backbone of its strategic air power. It can carry nuclear and conventional missiles and has been used in Syria and Ukraine for cruise missile strikes. Russia is believed to have had about 40 to 60 operational models. The Operation Spider’s Web attack came the day after Russia launched what Ukraine said was the heaviest bombardment of the invasion, when 472 drones and seven ballistic and cruise missiles were fired to hit targets across the country.
Mykhailo Drapaty, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, resigned hours after 12 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 60 wounded in a Russian strike on a training ground. It was a rare admission of military loss from Kyiv. “This is a deliberate step dictated by my personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy,” Drapaty wrote in his resignation letter.
On Sunday, Russia accused Ukraine of sabotage after two railway bridges collapsed near the border, killing seven civilians and injuring dozens more.
The first bridge collapsed late on Saturday night in Bryansk, falling on a railway line and derailing a train. Hours later, in Kursk, a railway bridge above a road collapsed while a freight train was crossing it.
Train derailments
Moscow Railway initially posted that the collapse in Bryansk was caused by “illegal interference”, but later deleted the message.
Russia’s Investigative Committee later linked the incidents, saying both bridges were deliberately blown up. “These incidents have been classified as acts of terrorism,” Svetlana Petrenko, the committee’s spokeswoman, said.
Additional reporting by Viktoriia Sybir.
Tom Parfitt is a correspondent based in Moscow who writes for the British newspaper, The Guardian, and other international publications. Tom has lived and worked as a journalist in Russia since finishing an MA in politics and security at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, in 2002. He has travelled regularly to Chechnya, Ingushetia and other parts of the North Caucasus to report on armed conflict, terrorism and human rights abuses committed by Russian security forces.
Catherine Philp is one of Britain’s most experienced foreign correspondents, having covered five continents in nearly 20 years at The Times. She has been based in overseas bureaus and reported on conflicts from Afghanistan to Colombia, winning several international press awards. She is judgmental about hummus and quite poor at looting the residences of fallen despots.