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Sunday, June 01, 2025
Ukraine attacks Russian air bases in far-reaching drone strikes. (Francesca Ebel, Leo Sands, David L. Stern and Natalia Abbakumova, Washington Post, June 1, 2025)
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.
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Olenya air base — a major Russian base on the Kola Peninsula, pictured in August in satellite imagery — was among the sites reportedly hit by Ukrainian drones Sunday. (Maxar Technologies)
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.
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.
ussian 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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The attacks may have dealt a significant blow to Russia’s aerial cruise missile strike capability, revealing the vulnerability of major military assets thousands of miles from the front lines. They have also exposed weaknesses in Russia’s powerful security apparatus to prevent sabotage operations deep within its territory.
Russian Tu-95 and A-50 aircraft were among those that the official in Ukraine’s security services listed as destroyed Sunday. Tu-95 bombers have been used extensively since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Each can carry eight guided cruise missiles. The weapons have a range of thousands of miles, which allows the aircraft carrying them to stay well inside Russian airspace.
The A-50 detects enemy aircraft and missiles and works in conjunction with Russian fighter jets, feeding intelligence on targets and directions.
Smoke rises above the village of Sredny in Russia's Irkutsk region following what local authorities called a drone attack on a military unit, in an image taken from a video published on Telegram on Sunday. ( Irkutsk region Gov. Igor Kobzev/Reuters)
Local Russian officials confirmed that drone attacks had hit remote Russian regions.
The governor of Russia’s far-north Irkutsk region, Igor Ivanovich Kobzev, said drones launched from a truck attacked a military unit in the village of Sredny. In a Telegram post Sunday, he said it was the first such attack to target Siberian territory.
In Russia’s northwest Murmansk, which borders Finland, regional governor Andrey Chibis said enemy drones had attacked unspecified targets. He urged residents to remain calm.
Telegram channels linked to Russia’s security services reported that FPV drones had attacked Russian long-range aviation bases at Olenya air base on the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk, and Belaya air base in the Irkutsk region — 3,400 miles (5,500 kilometers) east of Ukraine.
Videos shared on social media by residents in Usolye-Sibirskoye appear to show drones buzzing overhead, massive explosions and plumes of billowing smoke. “Is this the 11th [drone we’ve seen]? I have no idea what is happening over there,” a person can be heard saying in one video.
Before Russian officials and state media commented on the attack, the country’s influential “Z community” — pro-war bloggers, military journalists and propagandists — described Sunday’s assault as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor,” with some calling for retaliation.
“We hope that the response will be the same as the US response to the attack on their Pearl Harbor or even harsher,” military blogger Roman Alekhin wrote on his Telegram channel, which has 174,000 subscribers.
“This is not just a pretext. This is a reason to launch nuclear strikes on Ukraine,” wrote the author of the Telegram channel “Two Majors.”
he attack followed the sudden collapse of two bridges in western Russia that derailed a freight train and a passenger train, killing seven people and injuring at least 76 others. Local governor Alexander Bogomaz said the train had 388 passengers aboard when three of its carriages derailed.
The bridge collapses occurred within hours of each other overnight Sunday in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions, both of which border Ukraine. Photographs from the scene showed a large rescue operation underway Sunday morning at the site of the explosion, with debris strewn widely under a collapsed highway bridge. It was not immediately clear whether the collapses were linked to each other.
Russia’s top investigative body said it was treating both bridge collapses as criminal acts. In an earlier statement, later amended without explanation, it said explosions had caused the bridges to collapse.
Russian officials have blamed Kyiv for the collapses. Asked by The Washington Post if Kyiv was involved in the explosions, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s intelligence service said, “no comment.”
On Sunday, Alexei Kuznetsov, assistant to the Russian health minister, said 55 people injured in the Bryansk collapse are being treated in the hospital. Four of them, including one child, are in serious condition, he said.
Sunday’s drone attacks come a day before Ukrainian and Russian officials are due to meet in Istanbul for U.S.-backed direct peace talks. On Sunday, Zelensky confirmed Ukraine’s attendance, which had been thrown into doubt after the Ukrainian leader blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent days for failing to provide a memorandum outlining Russia’s conditions for peace.
Zelensky said that Ukraine’s delegation would again be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and that Russia had received his peace terms already.
The first is a complete and unconditional ceasefire. The second is the release of prisoners. The third is the return of the stolen children. And, in order to establish a reliable and lasting peace, to prepare a meeting at the highest level,” he said.
Russia, meanwhile, has said a draft of its memorandum will not be made public, according to state newswires. On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, at Russia’s request, according to the State Department. Rubio reiterated President Donald Trump’s call for continued direct talks between Russia and Ukraine to achieve a lasting peace, spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.
“Key issues can only be solved by leaders,” Zelensky added.
Ebel and Sands reported from London; Stern from Mukachevo, Ukraine; and Abbakumova from Riga, Latvia. Siobhán O’Grady in Kyiv contributed to this report.
1 comment:
Sam
said...
Russia is a corrupt, authoritarian kleptocracy under Putin. Whichever Americans support Russia in the war of aggression has no values whatsoever. Already too many Americans on the right side of the political spectrum have seditious and treasonous attitudes. Some even putting fictional beings above all else. Like, no wonder...
1 comment:
Russia is a corrupt, authoritarian kleptocracy under Putin. Whichever Americans support Russia in the war of aggression has no values whatsoever. Already too many Americans on the right side of the political spectrum have seditious and treasonous attitudes. Some even putting fictional beings above all else. Like, no wonder...
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