Ukraine hits Russia's bomber fleet in stealth drone attack

What happened

Ukraine struck 41 Russian long-range bombers and other military aircraft Sunday in a covert drone attack on air bases as far away as Siberia and the Finnish border, officials in Kyiv said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) had worked on the operation for 18 months, and the 117 drones they smuggled close to four air bases had disabled 34% of Russia's strategic bombers. Earlier Sunday, Russia killed at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers and wounded dozens more at a training base, Kyiv said, and hours before that Moscow launched 472 drones and seven missiles at Ukraine, hitting 18 targets.

Who said what

The "audacious" drone operation was a "significant victory for Ukraine's deep-strike program," The Wall Street Journal said, and the "biggest blow of the war against Moscow's long-range bomber fleet," which is also "vital to Russia's nuclear forces." Russia has been using Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers to hit Ukraine with hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles, and "killing the archers instead of intercepting the arrows" is "a more effective way to degrade Russian capabilities," said George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

SBU officials told Western media organizations they had hidden small explosive quadcopter drones inside the roofs of mobile wooden houses that were then driven near the Belaya, Ivanovo, Dyagilevo and Olenya air bases and released. They said the attack, codenamed Operation Spider's Web, inflicted $7 billion worth of irreparable damage to Russia's aging bomber fleet. Russia's Defense Ministry said the "terrorist attack" caused "several units of aircraft" to catch fire at the Belaya and Olenya airfields but the "fires have been extinguished" and there were "no casualties." Russia's "influential" pro-war military bloggers described the assault as the "Russian Pearl Harbor," The Washington Post said.

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Zelenskyy called the results "absolutely brilliant" and "achieved solely by Ukraine." The "people involved in preparing the operation were withdrawn from Russian territory in time," he added. "Ukraine is defending itself, and rightly so — we are doing everything to make Russia feel the need to end this war."

What next?

Zelenskyy said he was sending Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to scheduled ceasefire talks with Russia in Istanbul Monday, though "the key issues can only be resolved by the leaders."