It was a top-secret operation some 18 months in the planning. Codenamed ‘Spider’s Web’, it was executed with devastating effect yesterday afternoon and was as audacious as it was genius.
And as Volodymyr Zelensky said, just hours before Ukrainian and Russian delegates meet for negotiations in Turkey’s capital Istanbul today, the attack on Vladimir Putin’s irreplaceable nuclear bombers ‘will undoubtedly be in [the] history books’.
The attack was carried out exactly 29 years to the day after Ukraine handed over dozens of the same strategic bombers to Russia, along with up to 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads and 176 ICBMs in exchange for a promise not to be attacked, under the Budapest Memorandum.
In their most daring attack of the war to date, Ukrainian special forces first smuggled 117 first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones – which allow pilots to control them remotely through a live feed – into Russia.
Then came mobile wooden cabins, whose roofs had hidden compartments into which the small flying weapons were stashed.
They were loaded on to civilian trucks heading into enemy territory, their hired local drivers seemingly unaware of what they were carrying.
Finally, yesterday afternoon, with all the lorries within range of five airfields stretching from northern Russia down to Siberia – a safe 2,500 miles from Ukraine – they struck.
The roofs of the wooden cabins were opened remotely and the FPV drones took to the skies.
