WASHINGTON − Ukraine destroyed dozens of enemy bombers using a horde of drones smuggled deep into Russia in a stunning attack that Russian war bloggers are calling Moscow’s Pearl Harbor. It was the most damaging Ukrainian attack on Russia in the three years since Moscow invaded. Ukrainian intelligence said the coordinated strikes on June 1 took a $7 billion toll on Russia’s military and demolished more than a third of Moscow’s strategic cruise missile carriers, including planes capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the massive attack, which he said used 117 drones, his country’s “longest-range operation.” Ukraine defends nation against Russian invasion Ukraine’s outgunned forces fight to repel Russia’s wide-ranging assault as invasion continues. “It had an absolutely brilliant outcome,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram. “Russia has had very tangible losses, and justifiably so.” Oksana Markarova, Kyiv’s ambassador to the United States, called the attack a “very successful defensive operation in Russia against Russian aircraft that, on a daily basis, bomb our hospitals and schools and kill our kids.” Speaking at an AI event in Washington, Markarova said it was “the best example of how innovation can and should work in defense.” With Ukraine set to meet Russia for U.S.-brokered peace talks the next day and amid aggressive Russian advances on the battlefield, the ambitious June 1 attack showed neither side is counting on a breakthrough in negotiations. “We hope that the response will be the same as the US response to the attack on their Pearl Harbor or even tougher,” Russian war blogger Roman Alekhin wrote on Telegram, comparing the Ukrainian strike to the 1941 Japanese raid on a U.S. base in Hawaii. “It is impossible to restore these losses,” reported Rybar, a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel. The comparisons between the Ukrainian drone attack and the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack bandied by pro-Russian bloggers were not historically accurate. The operation, code-named “Spider’s Web,” was characteristic of the style of warfare Ukraine has made its brand as it attempts to undercut Russia’s larger military – flooding the zone with cheap, deadly drones. But the scope of this attack set a new precedent. The drones, strapped with explosives, were hidden inside the roofs of wooden sheds, which were dropped off by trucks at the outer edge of Russian military bases, a Ukrainian security official told Reuters. Ukraine’s intelligence service said 41 Russian aircraft were hit at four air bases stretching from the Finnish border to Siberia. One targeted base, in the Irkutsk region, lies more than 2,600 miles from the front lines, making it the farthest target Ukraine has hit during the conflict.
Russia’s defense ministry acknowledged in Telegram messages June 1 that drones launched “from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire.”