Written by: Livia Perrulli
Supervised by: Stephen Crowley
Edited by: Konstantinos Anagnostakis
On 1 June 2025, Ukraine launched Operation Spiderweb, the most effective drone attack against Russian airfields since the start of the war. A total of 117 drones were used to strike airbases across five regions – Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions –, with the aim of inflicting maximum damage on Russian aircraft far away from the frontier (Al Jazeera, 2025; Horowitz, 2025). Reports suggest that 41 aircrafts – including A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22 M3 and Tu-160 – have been hit in the operation along with a third of Russian bombers that are currently used as cruise-missile carriers (Horowitz, 2025; Security Service of Ukraine, 2025; Zoria, 2025).
This large-scale and audacious attack was developed for more than a year – to be precise one year, six months and nine days – as declared by President Zelensky who personally supervised the operation (Zoria, 2025). Remarkably, the Ukrainian leader also declared that the entire operation was coordinated from inside Russia. These drones were primarily smuggled into Russia through commercial truck transportation, then disguised in the back of the lorries equipped with detachable roofs that could be opened remotely (Gozzi, 2025; Horowitz, 2025). Countering this attack was extremely difficult – even though some systems managed to repel them – because the lorries were extremely close to the target, according to some sources 300 meters of distance and a very low altitude, thus they could have not be detected timely by air-defence systems (Gaspardo, 2025).
What makes this operation extraordinary, as explained by some experts, is that even though Ukraine has improved its know-how about drones’ manufacture, the ones used are normal “quadcopters carrying relatively heavy payloads” (Gozzi, 2025, sec.3, para.2). The most impressive aspect of this attack comes from the stealth ability of having carried inside the enemy’s territory such a number of drones – about 36 per container –, launching and conducting the entire operation remotely and on different time zones, and having succeeded in inflicting tangible and expensive wounds to their system (Gozzi, 2025; Mazhulin et al., 2025). Costs for the damage inflicted are around USD 7$ billion, and additionally some of the equipment is no longer in production, thus it cannot be substituted (Al Jazeera, 2025; Security Service of Ukraine, 2025).
Operation Spiderweb unfolded on the eve of the peace talks between the two countries in Istanbul (Soldatkin et al., 2025). The position of Russia on the issue is unchanged: Putin wants Ukraine to give up the territories Russia occupied during the war, to accept limits on the size of the army, and to become a neutral country – avoiding entering into NATO and the European Union. Kyiv, on the other hand, continues to reject the requests considering them as prelude to surrender. Both parties agreed to exchange prisoners of war and to return bodies of dead soldiers. Still, a full and unconditional ceasefire – as requested by the Ukrainians – that would also include no interference regarding its sovereign rights is far from being accepted (Reuters, 2025). The Turkish President, present at the venue of the talks, describe the event as a great meeting, while many agree that the only way to obtain a ceasefire is to make Zelensky and Putin meet (Soldatkin et al., 2025).
According to experts’ assessment, after this attack Russia will struggle to carry long-range drone and missile strikes (Gibson et al., 2025). The operation’s potential impact had been widely reported to Russian officials by both state media and military bloggers, who have called for a more effective distribution of air power across the country in order to avoid this kind of problem – a move that Russia is now expected and forced to undertake. This operation does not mark the victory of Ukraine over Russia, and cannot be considered a lifechanging event in the sense that, after reorganising their forces and equipment, Russia will again be capable of striking Kyiv (Gaspardo, 2025). Ultimately, this operation underlines the weakness and vulnerability of Russian intelligence and was also meant to reassure Ukraine’s allies that the country is still able to fight back and to continue sustaining the war (Soldatkin et al., 2025). One thing is certain: Operation Spiderweb will be memorable and will enter in the history books.
Bibliography
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Gaspardo, A. (2025, June 4). L’operazione “Spider’s web” di Kiev: Come l’Ucraina ha attaccato i bombardieri strategici russi. Geopop. https://www.geopop.it/operazione-spiders-web-come-lucraina-ha-attaccato-i-bombardieri-strategici-russi/
Gibson, O., Harvey, A., Novikov, D., Harward, C., & Stepanenko, K. (2025, June 1). Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. Institute for the Study of War. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-1-2025
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