Turcopolier  June 1, 2025

Shortly after noon on June 1st, Russian social media began flashing, alerting the world to Ukraine’s most audacious operation on Russian territory to date. In Irkutsk province in eastern Siberia, some 4,000km from Ukraine, locals posted footage of small quadcopter drones emerging from trucks and flying toward a nearby airfield, home to some of Russia’s most important strategic bombers. “I work at a tire shop,” one wrote. “A truck pulled in, and drones flew out of it.” From an airbase near Murmansk, in Russia’s far north, came similar stories: “The driver’s running around…drones are flying from his truck toward the base.” Other alarmed posts soon followed from airbases in Ryazan and Ivanovo provinces, deep in central Russia.

Ukraine’s main security agency, the sbu, has since claimed responsibility for the operation, which it has codenamed “Spider Web”. It said at least 41 Russian aircraft were destroyed or damaged across four airfields, including rare and extremely expensive a-50 early-warning planes (Russia’s equivalent of the AWACS) and Tu-22m3 and Tu-95 strategic bombers. The agency also released footage in which its pugnacious chief, Vasily Maliuk, is heard commenting on the operation. “Russian strategic bombers,” he says in his recognisable growl, “all burning delightfully”.

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I think the scope and complexity of this operation is easily on par with the Israeli exploding cell phone operation. It was done on a HUMINT time scale, surely with heavy reliance on clandestine tradecraft using numerous intelligence collection and support assets, establishing, loading and unloading dead drops, recruiting and running more support assets. “Sources in the SSU emphasize that the individuals involved in this historic operation have returned to Ukraine a long time ago. So, if Russia stages any arrests, it will simply be another performance for domestic propaganda,” says Anton Gerashchenko. That surely doesn’t include those unwitting truck drivers who drove the last leg of the journey to the airfields, much like the attack on the Kerch Bridge.

This appears to be a unilateral Ukrainian operation. The Trump administration was not told and, given that planning started eighteen months ago, nor was the Biden administration. So much for being a puppet, huh. How many other operations are in the works? I guess we won’t know until we see and hear the bavovna.

TTG

Read more here:

https://turcopolier.com/an-astonishing-raid-deep-inside-russia-rewrites-the-rules-of-war/