Kyiv, June 1 Ukraine's "massive" strike on Russian strategic assets across the length and breadth of the country was a meticulously planned operation that was over a year in the making and reportedly involved the insertion of drones close to their targets.
As per X user Maria Avdeeva, who describes herself as a "security expert covering invasion from day one" and "countering Russian disinformation since 2014", Ukraine had secretly delivered FPV drones and wooden mobile cabins into Russia, with the drones were hidden under the roofs of the cabins, which were later mounted on trucks.
"At the signal, the roofs opened remotely. Dozens of drones launched directly from the trucks, striking strategic bomber aircraft. And — Russia can’t produce these bombers anymore. The loss is massive. Nothing like this has ever been done before," Avdeeva said in a post on X.
Earlier in the day, Ukraine's secret service, the SBU, in a statement, said: "Enemy strategic bombers are burning en masse in Russia."
Ukraine is conducting "a large-scale special operation aimed at destroying enemy bomber aircraft", it said.
As per the BBC, SBU sources revealed that the operation, named "Spider’s Web", took a year and a half to organise and was personally overseen by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The sources said the SBU first smuggled the FPV drones into Russia, followed later by mobile wooden cabins.
Once on Russian territory, the drones were hidden under the roofs of these cabins, which had been placed onto trucks. At the time of the attack, the roofs were remotely opened, allowing the drones to take off and hit the nearby airbases, the BBC reported the sources as saying.
Ukraine estimates the damage caused by the attacks at over $2billon as it targeted airfields as far north as Murmansk, and as far east as Siberia, hitting strategic aviation assets like strategic bomber TU-95s, supersonic long-range bomber TU-22M3s, and early warning and control aircraft A-50.
Russia's Defence Ministry said that airfields were targeted in the Murmansk Region, in Ivanovo and Ryazan regions in central Russia, as well as in Irkutsk Region in Siberia and Amur Region in the Far East, but the attacks were "repelled", though there was some "material damage" to the aeroplanes. It did not reveal any further details.
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