Ukraine's operation 'Spider's Web' targeted four Russian air bases with drones

5/6/2025 6:12

The United States

assesses that Ukraine's drone attack over the weekend hit as

many as 20 Russian warplanes, destroying around 10 of them, two

U.S. officials told Reuters, a figure that is about half the

number estimated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.



Still, the U.S. officials described the attack as highly

significant, with one of them cautioning that it could drive

Moscow to a far more severe negotiating position in the

U.S.-brokered talks to end more than three years of war.



Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. President Donald

Trump in a telephone conversation on Wednesday that Moscow would

have to respond to attack, Trump said in a social media post.



Trump added it "was a good conversation, but not a

conversation that will lead to immediate peace."



Ukraine says it targeted four air bases across Russia using

117 unmanned aerial vehicles launched from containers close to

the targets, in an operation codenamed "Spider's Web."



It released footage on Wednesday showing its drones striking

Russian strategic bombers and landing on the dome antennas of

two A-50 military spy planes, of which there are only a handful

in Russia's fleet.



The two U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of

anonymity, estimated the Ukrainian strikes destroyed around 10

and hit up to 20 warplanes in total.



That estimate is far lower than the one Zelenskiy offered to

reporters in Kyiv earlier on Wednesday. He said half of the 41

Russian aircraft struck were too damaged to be repaired.



Reuters could not independently verify the numbers from Kyiv

or the United States.



Russia, which prioritizes its nuclear forces as a deterrent

to the United States and NATO, urged the United States and

Britain on Wednesday to restrain Kyiv after the attacks. Russia

and the United States together hold about 88% of all nuclear

weapons.



The United States says it was not given any notice by Kyiv

ahead of the attack.



The war in Ukraine is intensifying despite nearly four

months of efforts by Trump, who says he wants peace after the

deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two.



The White House did not immediately respond to a request for

comment.



The Russian and Ukrainian embassies also did not immediately

reply.







ESCALATION RISK



Ukraine's domestic security agency, the SBU, said the damage

to Russia caused by the operation amounted to $7 billion, and

34% of the strategic cruise missile carriers at Russia's main

airfields were hit.



Commercial satellite imagery taken after the Ukrainian drone

attack shows what experts told Reuters appear to be damaged

Russian Tu-95 heavy bombers and Tu-22 Backfires, long-range,

supersonic strategic bombers that Russia has used to launch

missile strikes against Ukraine.



Russia's Defence Ministry has acknowledged that Ukraine

targeted airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and

Amur regions and were repelled in the last three locations. It

has also said several aircraft caught fire in the Murmansk and

Irkutsk regions.



The attack has bolstered Ukrainian morale after months of

unrelenting Russian battlefield pressure and numerous powerful

missile and drone strikes by Moscow's forces.



It also demonstrated that Kyiv, even as it struggles to halt

invading Russian forces, can surprise Moscow deep inside its own

territory with attacks up to 4,300 km (2,670 miles) from the

front lines.



Influential Russian military bloggers have accused Russian

authorities, especially the aerospace command, of negligence and

complacency for allowing the nuclear-capable bombers to be

targeted.



Trump's Ukraine envoy said the risk of escalation from the

war in Ukraine was "going way up," particularly since Kyiv had

struck one leg of Russia's "nuclear triad," or weapons on land,

in the air and at sea.



"In the national security space, when you attack an

opponent's part of their national survival system, which is

their triad, the nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes

up because you don't know what the other side is going to do,"

Trump's envoy, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News on Tuesday.