Ukraine on Sunday launched massive drone attack against military bombers across Russia, downing over 40 warplanes deep in Russian territory, a security official said. The attack marked Ukraine’s most damaging strike against Russian military facilities since the start of the war three years ago.
Video footage from a number of military airfields showed destroyed Russian aircraft engulfed in flames. Ukraine’s Security Service, SBU, said it had destroyed Russian military planes worth a combined $7bn in the barrage of drone strikes. Among the downed warplanes are strategically important Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers used in Russia’s long-range strikes on Ukrainian cities.
Codenamed “Spiderweb”, the operation has been in preparation for over 18 months, Ukrainian officials told local media. The drones were smuggled into Russia and hidden in makeshift mobile houses, which were then placed on trucks.
"At the right moment, the roofs of the houses were remotely opened and the drones flew out to strike," the source said.
The Russian Defence Ministry acknowledged Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian airfields, stating that several units of aircraft caught fire in the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions "as a result of the launch of FPV drones from the territory located in the immediate vicinity of the airfield. The ministry stated that the attacks were repelled "military airfields in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised the results of the attacks as “brilliant”, stating that the operation will "will undoubtedly be in the history books." Zelenskiy revealed that the military personnel involved in the operation were already successfully withdrawn from the Russian territory in time.
"Ukraine is defending itself, and rightly so -- we are doing everything to make Russia feel the need to end this war," Zelenskiy stressed.
The large-scale attack came ahead of Russia-Ukraine peace talks scheduled for Monday in Istanbul, Turkey.
