For 18 months, the Ukrainian Internal Security Service was planning a bold attack on remote Russian military airports, initially unnoticed drones in Russia and then placing them close to key military corridors.

On Sunday, shortly before a new round of peace talks, the operation began: Near four Russian military bases, removable caravans and rough constructions, loaded with trailers, opened with remote control. Armed Ukrainian drones that were hidden inside them threw up and attacked military aircraft on the corridors, wrapping many of them in flames.

This bold attack, which, according to Ukrainian officials, destroyed at least 13 Russian aircraft and caused damage to dozens of others, surprised Moscow and instantly reduced its ability to launch a nuclear or missile attack on Ukraine. At the same time, it was a critical reminder of Moscow and Ukraine’s Western partners that Kiev still maintains the ability to identify and exploit Russia’s weaknesses and disrupt its war plans, despite its numeric and equipment superiority.

Ukraine said that damage or damages, some of which had nuclear capacity, included the A-50s, TU-95, TU-22 M3 and TU-160, aircraft, which, according to Kiev, Russia used bombings in the Ukraine.

Many details of how the attack was designed are unknown, and it has not been clarified how many of the Russian aircraft were operational at the time of the attack.
Videos and reactions published on social media showed that in Russia, drone attacks caused panic, confusion and then anger by philop -war commentators. The rulers of several regions – even from Siberia – confirmed the attacks, while citizens recorded smoke rising over the military bases, expressing their surprise to what they saw. Soon, pro -government military bloggers baptized the attack “Pearl Harbor of Russia”.

In a video that could not be verified independently of the Washington Post, it appears that residents around the bases recorded drones flying low and black tobacco columns rising on the horizon. In one of them, a woman watches a drone heading towards a flaming base, while her neighbors comment on that she is the eleventh she is going through. In another video, one man captured drones to launch from the back of a roadside truck.

Shots are heard in the background as security forces are trying to break the drones. In another snapshot, a young soldier, who seems to serve on another basis, is shooting videos with burning aircraft. In viewing the camera, he describes the scene using a diminutive vocabulary. The enraged Russian propagandist Vladimir Soloviov then demanded that the soldier be executed and called him “bastard”.

At the same time, in Kiev, the SBU, the Ukrainian security service that designed the bold blows, publicly assumed responsibility, revealing that the business had the code name “Spider Web”. President Volodimir Zelenski immediately posted photos embracing the head of the service, Lieutenant General Vasil Maliuk, to congratulate him.

“The enemy believed that he could bomb Ukraine and kill Ukrainians unpunished and indefinitely,” SBU chief Vasil Maliuk said Monday. “But that’s not the case. We will respond to Russia’s terrorism and destroy the enemy everywhere. “

In Ukraine, the success of the attack has brought a coveted dose of optimism to a society that has been exhausted after more than three years of totalitarian war and is, by far, unjustly pressured by the US to accept Russian demands even without sufficient security guarantees.

“This business completely changes the perception of reality – both within Russia and internationally. Our enemies are now forced to recognize that Ukrainian intelligence services can penetrate even the safest points, “said Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko, Secretary of the National Security Committee. “When the enemy loses dozens of strategically bombers, it’s not just a technical loss, it is a blow to his ability to blackmail the world with missile attacks.”

Former Ukraine Defense Minister Olimsi Reesnikov recalled that Ukraine had handed over its own strategic TU bombers in Russia under the 1996 agreement, in which it abandoned its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees.

“On June 1, 2025, Ukraine began to withdraw exactly these aircraft from the Memorandum Guarantor, who used them shamelessly against Ukrainian citizens,” he said, describing Sunday’s attack as “a peculiar kind of military-legal sanctions”.

A former Ukrainian official, who spoke under anonymity, said the attack “inspired Ukrainian society and soldiers”, though he expressed the fear that he could enhance the resistance to any compromise that could lead to a real.

“We are not likely to compromise in the near future. And yet, some form of compromise seems to be the only way to stop or even freeze the war, “the former Ukrainian official said. However, he added, the attack dramatically improved the reputation of SBU and “worth recording in history books”.

At the same time, Russian officials and state -run media have kept a remarkable silence for Sunday’s attacks.

According to the Russian Agent “Agentsvo”, the Channel One and Rossiya 1 state channels have only dedicated only 40 seconds to the unprecedented blow to remote Russian air bases. By Monday morning, the news had disappeared from the bulletins.

“The smartest thing Putin could do now is not to answer immediately,” wrote Russian political scientist Vladimir Pastuchov, based in London. “Putin’s best answer is to delay, something he is good.”

“Putin does not have many impressive ‘good’ moves at his disposal right now,” he continued. “Ukraine does not have similar strategic installations that could be destroyed without horrific loss of civilians and a huge environmental destruction … that would further injure Trump’s already fragile image.”

The pro -government Russian military blogger Michael Zvindsuk, the manager of the Rybar channel on Telegram, said the attack would cause significant “moral and psychological damage” and that the Ukrainian business aimed at not only in the use of vacancy and the use of “gaps in the welfare”.

If Ukraine can hit air bases, he said, then it may also be able to hit motorways or basic refueling lines, causing panic.

“Undoubtedly, in terms of undermining the Russian military potential, this is an extremely unpleasant case, especially in the light of the loss of the TU-95ms,” he added, referring to Russia’s basic strategic bomber with nuclear capacity.
Russian dissidents, for their part, praised Ukraine’s “stunning” and “crazy” business.

“Everyone says that the only way to negotiate with Putin is from a position of power. Well, here’s, “the Russian opposition politician and former political prisoner Ily Yassin wrote on social media.

Yi Matveyev, a military analyst of the Navalny Corruption Foundation, described the attack as a “immediate and extremely sensitive blow to the Russian nuclear trinity”, noting that he had destroyed “rare and expensive bombers”.

“Most importantly, it limited the possibility of the Russian Air Force to hit Ukrainian cities,” Matveyev wrote in Telegram.