Ukraine drones strike Russia in major attack

Ukraine’s daring, sweeping attack on military bases deep inside Russia, which required 18 months of planning, has reportedly wiped out a third of Vladimir Putin’s strategic bombers and severely diminished his capacity to launch long-range strikes. To prepare for the attack, codenamed Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine smuggled hundreds of deadly drones across the Russian border. Those drones, hidden in special compartments inside freight trucks, were then driven to multiple locations thousands of kilometres apart from one another. They penetrated as far as Siberia, roughly 5000km from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Other targets were located in Murmansk, near the Arctic Circle, Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, and Ivanovo, to the northeast of the Russian capital. The trucks released the drones at a coordinated moment, launching them towards Russian air bases, where they wrought havoc. Soon afterwards, the Ukrainian Security Service was boasting that Putin’s air force was “burning en masse”. Ukraine claimed it had destroyed or damaged at least 41 aircraft, including Tu-95 bombers, which carry up to eight Kh-101 missiles with 400kg warheads and a range of well over 4000km. It released a video of the planes being destroyed on the tarmac.