Ukraine's daring drone assault forces Russia to shelter, relocate aircraft
Russia's increased sense of vulnerability may be the most important result of a recent large-scale Ukrainian drone attack named Operation Spiderweb, experts tell Al Jazeera.
The operation destroyed as much as a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet on the tarmac of four airfields deep inside Russia on June 1.
Days later, Russia started to build shelters for its bombers and relocate them.
An open source intelligence (OSINT) researcher nicknamed Def Mon posted time-lapse satellite photographs on social media showing major excavations at the Kirovskoe airfield in annexed Crimea as well as in Sevastopol, Gvardiyskoye and Saki, where Russia was constructing shelters for military aircraft.
They reported similar work at several airbases in Russia, including the Engels base, which was targeted in Ukraine's attacks on June 1.
Another OSINT analyst, MT Anderson, used satellite images to show that all Tupolev-95 strategic bombers had left Russia's Olenya airbase in the Murmansk region by June 7.
Much of the fleet remains intact but Ukraine 'demonstrated to Russia that they do not have a sanctuary any more on their own territory', said Minna Alander, a fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Programme at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
'In terms of taking the war to Russian territory, it was even more important than the Kursk incursion in the sense that Ukrainians managed to hit targets of high strategic value thousands of miles from the front lines.'
Ukraine conducted a counterinvasion of Russian territory in August, catching forces in Kursk off-guard and seizing territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently argued that the war must return to Russia. Both the Kursk offensive and Spiderweb served that purpose.
For the first time, Ukraine with its Operation Spiderweb claimed to have hit the Olenya airbase in the Russian Arctic, almost 2,000km (1,240 miles) from Ukraine, where all Tu-95 bombers were reported destroyed.
Also reportedly struck were the Belaya airbase in Irkutsk, more than 4,000km (2,485 miles) from Ukraine; the Dyagilevo airbase in Ryazan, only 175km (110 miles) from downtown Moscow; and the Ivanovo airfield, 250km (155 miles) northeast of Moscow, where a rare early warning and targeting coordination A-50 radar aircraft was destroyed.
Russia had historically based its strategic bombers at the Engels base in Saratov and the Ukrainska base in Amur province. It dispersed them to Belaya and Olenya bases in the past two years to protect them after Ukraine struck the Engels base with drones. Now Ukraine has again deprived Russia of any sense of security.
'These strategic bomber strikes were 'asymmetric genius',' said Seth Krummrich, a former US army colonel and vice president of Global Guardian, a security consultancy. 'Cheap drones smuggled deep into Russia destroy priceless and rare Russian strategic bombers. Ukraine is outthinking and outmanoeuvring the slow and large Russian military.'
Three days before Operation Spiderweb, Zelenskyy had said he was seeking more European investment in Ukraine's long-range capabilities.
'Of course, we cannot publicly disclose our existing plans and our capabilities, but the prospect is clear: to respond symmetrically to all Russian threats and challenges,' Zelenskyy said. 'They in Russia must clearly feel the consequences of what they are doing against Ukraine. And they will. Attack drones, interceptors, cruise missiles, Ukrainian ballistic systems – these are the key elements. We must manufacture all of them.'
Ukraine has already changed Russian threat perceptions several times during this war using long-range weapons, often targeting the Russian air force.
In 2023, Ukraine started striking Russian airfields in occupied Crimea, forcing Russia to relocate its bombers.
An unnamed White House official told Politico last year that '90 percent of the planes that launch glide bombs' against Ukrainian front-line positions have been moved back inside Russia.
Ukraine has dealt Russia similar psychological blows at sea.
In 2022, it sank the Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva using Neptune missiles. Its subsequent development of surface drones to strike other Russian Black Sea Fleet ships has forced the Russian navy to abandon Crimea for the shelter of Novorossiysk.
In December, Ukraine adapted those surface drones to launch rockets, downing two Russian helicopters near Crimea. In early May, its Magura-7 unmanned surface drones successfully downed two Russian Sukhoi-30 fighter jets using AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles originally designed for air-to-air use. No military in the world had downed fighter jets from surface drones before.
'Russian missiles in many cases have ranges of thousands of miles. The bombers don't need to come anywhere near Ukraine to do what they do. The Arctic was a major base for attacking Ukraine even though they're thousands of kilometres from Ukraine,' said Keir Giles, Eurasia expert at the Chatham House think tank.
Spiderweb involved 117 drones smuggled into Russia and launched simultaneously near Russian airfields where the bombers were parked.
The drones used the Russian cellphone network but were controlled from Ukraine, Giles said.
'So they were piggybacking [on the radio network] and hiding in noise. They must have had people on site because they had an operational planning based in the country to assemble these components. … People were long gone by the time the operation happened, leaving poor, hapless Russian truck drivers trying to figure out what was going on,' he said.
On June 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin put on a brave face, saying his country possesses the most modern nuclear triad in the world, but that may have been bluster rather than a threat, experts said.
'Ukraine likely destroyed the most operational segment of the fleet, evidenced by the fact that these aircraft were not undergoing maintenance at the time of the attack,' wrote Fabian Hoffman, a missile expert. 'Some were even fuelled when hit, indicating they were likely scheduled for use within the next 24 hours.'
Will such strikes win the war? 'The cornerstone of this fight remains an infantryman's bullets, artillery shells, armour, and all the vehicles and transports logistically required to support a vast front line in a defensive war,' Krummrich said. 'Yes, drones significantly facilitate manoeuvre warfare in this conflict, but the drone does not win the fight.'
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