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Express Tribune
15-06-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Untangling the Spider's Web of Ukraine
On June 1, Ukraine launched one of the boldest and most complex operations of the drone warfare era. Codenamed Spider's Web, the mission saw over 100 drones strike deep into Russian territory — far beyond the frontlines of the war, and seemingly out of nowhere. According to Russia's Defence Ministry, airbases in five regions — Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur — came under attack. Moscow acknowledged aircraft damage in Murmansk and Irkutsk, while insisting the remaining drones were repelled. Ukraine, however, claimed the assault was far more devastating: 41 strategic bombers hit and 'at least' 13 destroyed. The aircraft targeted were some of Russia's most prized strategic bombers: Tu-95s, Tu-22s and Tu-160s, all of them long-range, missile-carrying platforms that are no longer in production and have no immediate replacements. These Cold War-era bombers form a key component of Russia's nuclear triad. Independent analysis lends weight to Ukraine's claim of damages. The BBC, citing satellite imagery from Capella Space, confirmed at least four long-range bombers were destroyed at Belaya airbase. Ukrainian drone footage released shortly after showed direct hits on a Tu-95, reinforcing the evidence. 18 months in the making Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) reportedly orchestrated the operation over a period of 18 months. In a statement, SBU chief Vasyl Maliuk revealed how the drones had been stealthily smuggled into Russia: packed inside wooden cabins mounted on trucks, hidden beneath remotely operated, detachable roofs. These trucks, Maliuk said, were driven to locations near airbases by unsuspecting drivers who were allegedly unaware of the drones inside. Once in position, the drones were launched straight from the lorries. Footage circulating online shows one such drone emerging through the roof of a vehicle. Russian Telegram channel Baza, known to have ties to state security services, reported that all drivers gave similar testimonies. They had been hired by intermediaries posing as businessmen to transport wooden cabins and were later instructed via phone where to park. Once the trucks were in place, the drones were activated remotely. The SBU also released photos showing dozens of sleek, compact black drones — reportedly first-person view (FPV) drones — neatly packed in wooden crates inside a warehouse. Russian military bloggers later geolocated the site to Chelyabinsk. The drones were piloted remotely using ArduPilot, an open-source software platform that supports autonomous navigation through dead reckoning — a method that calculates position based on a drone's previously known location, direction, and speed, without relying on satellite navigation. This allowed the drones to remain operational even in areas where GPS jamming is prevalent. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later confirmed that each drone had its own human pilot, launching and steering it from afar. One analyst noted that the drones' use of dead reckoning made them nearly immune to electronic interference. The same analyst also suggested the drones likely used local SIM cards to transmit positional data and digital communications over mobile networks, allowing for remote piloting and even real-time high-resolution video streaming. To overcome the inevitable delays in long-distance communication — and to maintain function even in the event of a signal loss — the drones may also have been equipped with onboard artificial intelligence (AI). According to a report by the Kyiv Post, Ukraine trained AI systems specifically for Spider's Web using hundreds of images of Russian bombers housed at the Poltava Museum of Heavy Bomber Aviation. These images were used to identify vulnerable areas of the aircraft, allowing algorithms to guide drones in autonomously recognising and striking their targets, even without real-time human input. 'Strategic vulnerability laid bare' Following the operation, President Zelensky triumphantly posted on social media that Spider's Web had used 117 drones in total. The mission, he wrote, had taken 'one year, six months and nine days' to prepare. According to the SBU, the estimated cost of the damage inflicted on Russia's air power was $7 billion — a staggering figure in both financial and strategic terms. Speaking to The Express Tribune, Dr. James Rogers, Executive Director at Cornell's Brooks Tech Policy Institute, warns that this is not just a battlefield innovation — it's a strategic vulnerability now laid bare. 'You don't have to run the gauntlet across Russia anymore,' he says. 'These smaller systems can fly so low, and they are incredibly difficult to defend against.' For states that have long relied on geography for protection — like Russia's remote Arctic airbases or even NATO's scattered drone-operating outposts — this raises uncomfortable questions. 'Every airbase can't have bespoke air defences,' Dr. Rogers adds. 'Urban areas can't deploy GPS jammers or microwave weapons without impacting civilian life. And even in rural areas, the numbers just don't add up. Russia likely deprioritised Murmansk and Siberia for this reason.' The same logic could soon apply to US and NATO's expeditionary micro-bases and even civilian infrastructure. Dr. Rogers cites recent sabotage incidents across Europe — 'the Heathrow substation, the Cannes Film Festival blackout, the French rail system disruptions' — as troubling signs of hybrid threats that may soon include commercial surface and underwater drones. Fleeting win or game-changer? Dr. Malcolm Davis, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), calls the attack 'an important strategic strike with high symbolic value.' Though he stops short of comparing it to a 'Russian Pearl Harbor', as some observers immediately labeled it, Dr. Davis notes the precision and scale: 'Containerised munitions, precision FPV drones, Russian drivers unwittingly carrying payloads — this was 18 months of sophisticated intelligence and operational planning.' Yet he also cautions against overstating its impact. One especially sensitive concern is whether the attack's targeting of strategic bombers, technically part of Russia's nuclear triad, risked escalation. Dr. Davis notes that while Tu-95s and Tu-22s were struck, the Tu-160 fleet seemingly remains intact, and Russia has not reached the nuclear red line. 'Yes, it hit Russia's long-range bomber fleet hard, especially Tu-95s and Tu-22s. But many Tu-160 Blackjacks remain. Russia retaliated quickly with bomber-led strikes on Ukrainian cities. Strategically, the war remains unchanged unless Ukraine's international backing falters,' he shares. 'Technically, yes — this could be seen as an attack on nuclear forces,' Dr. Davis explains. 'But using that as a justification for tactical nuclear retaliation is far more complex. It would break the nuclear taboo that's held since Nagasaki. The global political cost — alienating BRICS allies like China or inviting direct NATO intervention — would likely outweigh any benefit for Russia.' Still, the threshold exists. The danger is not that Spider's Web will provoke nuclear retaliation today, but that future strikes — perhaps by actors without the same geopolitical constraints — might not show such restraint. That strategic dimension carries existential weight. Dr. Davis warns that if the United States abandons Ukraine, and European nations fail to fill the void, 'we're either looking at a prolonged stalemate — or a probable Russian victory.' In that context, Spider's Web may be a fleeting tactical win rather than a game-changer. 'The cheap, the small, the many' That said, the attack exposed an uncomfortable truth for advanced militaries worldwide: traditional platforms — like bombers, tanks, and airbases — are now vulnerable to low-cost, high-impact systems. Dr. Davis calls this the era of 'the cheap, the small, and the many.' 'Drone warfare is here, and it's here to stay,' he says. 'For a fraction of the cost of advanced jets or warships, you can build precision strike capabilities that produce outsized effects.' What Ukraine demonstrated was disruptive innovation in real time, a warning to military planners still invested in expensive, legacy systems. Whether Moscow confirms the full scale of the losses or not, Spider's Web marks a turning point in modern warfare: a glimpse into a future where remotely operated, AI-guided weapons can be smuggled across borders and launched from within. Blueprint for non-state actors? While this particular operation was carried out by a state actor — Ukraine — against an invading force in the context of open war, it also raises disquieting questions about the future. Spider's Web may not only represent the evolution of state-led asymmetric warfare — it may also serve as a dark prototype for tactics that could be adopted by non-state actors. Could a similar operation be replicated by terror groups or insurgent movements — organisations that lack access to fighter jets, long-range missiles, or satellite infrastructure, but have access to consumer drones, open-source software, and Internet connectivity? Could this technology serve as a great equaliser, enabling them to threaten or damage the strategic capabilities of far more powerful militaries? The most chilling prospect is that Spider's Web may be copied not just by states, but also by militant groups. Dr. Rogers points out that the parts used in such attacks — consumer-grade drone components, open-source flight software, SIM card-based communication — are nearly impossible to regulate through export controls. 'During a UN investigation, we found no single piece of tech you could realistically lock down to stop this threat,' he says. 'We're entering a phase where violent non-state actors can leverage large language models to become self-taught engineers — capable of designing, modifying, and deploying advanced military technologies,' says Dr. Rogers. 'The second threat is what happens when the Ukraine-Russia war eventually ends. Both sides have produced millions of advanced drones. If even a fraction of that arsenal enters the global arms market, it's only a matter of time before these capabilities end up in the hands of insurgent groups or proxies And who knows what drone capabilities were left behind by departing US forces deployed elsewhere.' Some aspects of that future are no longer theoretical. The January 2024 drone strike that killed three US personnel in Jordan — conducted by an Iranian-aligned militia — was the first time hostile enemy airpower claimed American lives since Korea. Spider's Web, in this light, may be less an anomaly than a warning. The ingredients used in Spider's Web — commercially available drones, repurposed open-source software, AI trained on publicly accessible imagery, and civilian transport vehicles — are, disturbingly, within reach of many well-funded non-state actors. The concept of smuggling drones into a target country in innocuous-looking trucks, hiding them in wooden crates, and launching them via remote command is alarmingly replicable. Moreover, the operation hints at a future where nation-states may use such tactics through proxies, employing drones to carry out precision strikes under a veil of plausible deniability. With no boots on the ground and no need for overt military engagement, Spider's Web-style attacks could blur the line between cyber operations, sabotage, and conventional warfare. A deniable drone strike that cripples an adversary's airbase or power grid may one day fall into the grey zone between war and peace — a tempting tool in an era of hybrid conflict. Just as roadside IEDs reshaped the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan, these low-cost, high-impact drone tactics could redefine the modern theatre of war. What Ukraine achieved with Spider's Web was unprecedented. But what it may have inadvertently unleashed is a new doctrine of distributed, deniable, and devastating warfare — one that doesn't require control of the skies, only control of the code. The consequences are profound — not only for military strategists and national security planners but also for civilian infrastructure, global arms control regimes, and the future of warfare itself.
Hindustan Times
05-06-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
The Ukrainian Spy Agency Behind the Stunning Strike on Russia's Bomber Fleet
KYIV, Ukraine—With its devastating drone assault on Russia's strategic bomber fleet, Ukraine's SBU security service pulled off the kind of spectacular operation that has long fed the mystique of top spy agencies like Israel's Mossad. The SBU has transformed during the three-year war into the sharp tip of Ukraine's spear after decades of being maligned as corrupt, shot through with traitors and more focused on chasing political opponents than security threats. Under the leadership of Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, the agency has taken the fight to Russia with the killings of alleged traitors and Russian military officers as well as with the use of long-range explosive drones that have targeted Russian military-production plants and oil facilities. It has also revolutionized naval warfare by deploying naval drones that forced the Russian Black Sea Fleet to largely abandon its home port in occupied Crimea. Maliuk, a burly 42-year-old who worked his way up through the ranks of the SBU, has built a reputation as a hands-on leader with a tough streak. In February, Maliuk personally detained a senior officer of the agency who was allegedly spying for Russia. The SBU's drone attack on Sunday, dubbed Operation Spiderweb, was 18 months in the planning and damaged 41 Russian warplanes at four airfields deep inside Russia, according to the SBU. The agency released fresh drone footage on Wednesday, which showed dozens of drones targeting planes across four Russian airports. Drones landed on two A-50 planes, which provide early warning of potential threats as well as command and control of the battlefield. It isn't clear whether there was an explosion from each drone, as the detonation of the drones also cuts the video feed. The A-50s didn't have engines on them, calling into question whether the planes were operational, according to Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. One of the planes was no longer present in satellite imagery of the air base on Monday. The new video proves that the strike caused more damage than previously revealed through satellite images and videos posted online. It shows that dozens of warplanes were attacked, though it doesn't confirm damage to all of the 41 the SBU says were hit in the operation. 'Operation Spiderweb will go down as one of the most effective intelligence-driven special-operations missions in history,' said Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense. 'The clandestine development of a platform to conduct this, the operational security being able to be maintained to protect it and the skill and expertise necessary to execute were exceptional.' President Trump said Wednesday that he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin for over an hour, including about the Ukrainian assault. 'President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,' Trump wrote on social media. SBU operatives smuggled Ukrainian drone parts into Russia and assembled them at a secret location before dispatching them toward air bases concealed in wooden containers on the back of trucks. A Ukrainian law-enforcement official said Kyiv tracked Russian plane movements ahead of the operation to increase the chance of success when they were dispersed across several airports. Satellite imagery shows the movement of Tupolev Tu-95 bombers, Soviet-era aircraft vital to Russia's long-range missile campaigns, in the days ahead of the attack. The operation took advantage of a moment when the targeted planes were evenly distributed across Russian air bases to 'maximize the effectiveness of their drones,' said Lair, who first identified the plane movements. On Sunday, as the trucks were close to four Russian airfields, the roofs were opened remotely and 117 drones flew out and zipped toward their targets. An SBU official said the drones were guided manually by pilots but, in a sign of how the agency is at the forefront of technological advances, artificial intelligence took over when some of the craft lost their signal, automatically piloting the drones to strike their targets along preplanned routes. Ukrainian officials quickly lavished praise on the SBU for the operation, stressing that it was planned and executed by Ukrainians using homegrown equipment. 'We are grateful to our partners, but this operation was conducted by the Ukrainian side alone,' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Monday. In the days after the Russian invasion in February 2022, the SBU was in disarray. Several senior officers had allegedly betrayed their service by assisting the Russians. They were later detained. The SBU emerged from its Soviet predecessor, the KGB, after Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The KGB and its forerunners had relentlessly targeted Ukrainians who promoted independence. As Ukraine took an authoritarian turn in the late 1990s, the SBU pursued pro-democracy activists and political opponents and shook down businesses. After Russia invaded and seized Crimea and covertly sent paramilitaries into eastern Ukraine in 2014, dozens of SBU officers switched sides to Russia. After that invasion, Moscow continued to recruit moles inside the agency. In July 2022, Zelensky removed the then-chairman of the SBU, his childhood friend Ivan Bakanov, and replaced him with Maliuk, who had led operations to root out Russian agents. Under Maliuk's leadership, the SBU quickly became a feared and creative agency that targeted Russian military installations, equipment and military and pro-war figures in a series of brazen attacks. Maliuk is respected in the agency, in part because he wasn't a professional politician parachuted in by the country's president, as were several previous leaders. Before running the agency, he worked for years in regional SBU offices and fought against Russia after the 2014 invasion. 'He knows every fighter by name, he's always open for honest conversation,' said one SBU officer, who said Maliuk frequently travels to the front lines of the war. He has embraced new technology, particularly drones, and is adept at spotting Russian weak points and striking there with spectacular results, officers said. In an October 2022 attack planned and executed by the SBU, a truck loaded with explosives detonated on the Kerch Bridge linking mainland Russia to Crimea. The explosion ignited tanker wagons in a passing cargo train and damaged the bridge, a project feted by Putin and critical to his military's logistics. Explosive naval drones developed by a special unit of the SBU have struck at least 11 Russian ships, according to the agency's numbers, forcing Russia to withdraw much of its Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea. A naval drone was also used to strike the Kerch Bridge again in 2023, severely damaging a support pillar. The officer in charge of the SBU's sea drone program said Maliuk's trust and support during its infancy were critical to its success. Outmatched in labor and equipment by its giant invader, Ukraine has relied on the SBU to find ways to strike deep inside Russia using long-range drones and covert operations. The SBU has steadily increased the range of its explosive drones, which now regularly target Russian military and industrial facilities inside Russia. The security service has pulled off daring assassinations on Russian territory. It used an exploding scooter to kill a Russian general in Moscow and a bomb hidden inside a statuette to take out a Russian war blogger in St. Petersburg. The agency has also been active in Ukraine hunting down spies and saboteurs. As a result of the successes, the SBU's reputation has soared among the Ukrainian public. Trust in the agency stood at 73% last September, according to a survey by Kyiv-based pollster Rating, compared with 23% in 2021. Ukraine's postal service has released a special stamp to celebrate the SBU's operations. Write to James Marson at and Brenna T. Smith at Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
Hindustan Times
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Inside the Ukrainian Drone Operation That Devastated Russia's Bomber Fleet
KYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine's spectacular drone attack on Russia's strategic bomber fleet on Sunday began with a daunting request from Ukraine's president to his spy chief in late fall 2023. The Russian Air Force was pummeling Ukraine's power stations and cities with missiles, overwhelming meager air defenses, and Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to know: How can we fight back? Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, a 42-year-old career security officer with broad shoulders and a stern mien, has earned a reputation for innovative operations with explosive naval and aerial drones that forced Russia to withdraw much of its Black Sea Fleet from its base in occupied Crimea and damaged dozens of oil plants and military-production facilities deep inside Russia. But the task was formidable. The strategic bombers that launched many of Russia's most powerful missiles operate from beyond the range of Ukraine's air-defense systems, and were based at airfields across the country as much as 3,000 miles from Ukraine. Ukraine's SBU security service, which Maliuk heads, has deployed long-range aerial drones effectively, but they are vulnerable to Russian air defenses, including missile interceptors and jammers. What Maliuk and his team came up with shocked the world on Sunday with its audacity. The agency smuggled Ukrainian drone parts into Russia and assembled them at a secret location. SBU operatives inside Russia used unwitting truck drivers to deliver a modern version of the Trojan horse by concealing the drones in the roofs of wooden containers. On Sunday, the roofs, activated remotely, slid open on trucks close to Russian airbases, releasing dozens of drones and adding a dash of Transformers to old-school spycraft. More than 100 quadcopters, small drones with four rotors, emerged and zipped toward their targets, some descending through smoke billowing from already-damaged aircraft. A Wall Street Journal analysis of official Ukrainian statements along with satellite images, accounts by people familiar with the operation, and photographs and videos posted on social media shows how a meticulously planned operation that combined homegrown technology with the classic art of deception unfolded. Ukraine said that it damaged 41 warplanes valued at $7 billion at four bases using drones that cost about $2,000 each. Publicly available videos and satellite imagery reviewed by Journal showed 12 damaged planes across two airbases. 'The numbers the Ukrainians have been providing aren't backed up yet by hard evidence,' said Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a Monterey, Calif.-based think tank that studies weapons of mass destruction. Lair identified the damaged planes through satellite imagery and social media. Still, he said, 'It's clear that this has dealt a very heavy blow to the Russian strategic bomber force, even if we aren't seeing the numbers that the Ukrainians have claimed.' Of the four airbases that the SBU said it targeted, satellite imagery indicates that three sustained damage, and only two show visible signs of damaged aircrafts—the Belaya and Olenya airbases. Satellite imagery from Monday shows that a third airbase, Dyagilevo, sustained only a patch of burned grass, according to Lair. Much of the damaged equipment is irreplaceable or hard to rebuild. A Ukrainian law-enforcement official said at least one of the targets damaged was a rare A-50 plane, which provides airborne early warning of potential threats and targets as well as command and control of the battlefield. Available satellite imagery doesn't show any damaged A-50s. Most of the planes hit were Tupolev Tu-95 bombers, a Soviet-era aircraft still crucial to Russia's long-range missile campaigns. While the extent of the damage to Tu-95s remains unclear, in light of the aircrafts' age and scarcity of parts, even relatively minor damage could derail Russia's air missions for months, Lair said. Maliuk and his agency have plenty of experience striking prime targets, from the use of a truck bomb to damage the Kerch Bridge between mainland Russia and occupied Crimea to assassinations on Russian territory, including the killing of a Russian general with an exploding scooter as well as a bomb hidden in a statuette to kill a prominent war blogger. Zelensky said that Ukrainian intelligence operatives in Russia had set up a base right under the noses of Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB. Russian law enforcement searched a concrete warehouse Sunday in Chelyabinsk, an industrial city in the Ural Mountains about 900 miles east of Moscow and a few miles from the local FSB headquarters, according to Russian media. Russian state media named a Ukrainian deejay who had been living in Russia and recently relocated to the city last year as one of the people responsible for logistics behind the drone attack, purchasing the trucks that would carry the drones and coordinating the drivers. He didn't respond to requests for comment. Some of the materials the SBU used in the operation had to be smuggled across tightly controlled borders, including the parts that would eventually be assembled into the attack drones. A Ukrainian law-enforcement official said the drones used were quadcopters called Osa, produced by the Ukrainian company First Contact. The craft, about the length of a man's arm, are made in Ukraine, can carry a payload just over 7 pounds and travel at a maximum speed of just over 90 miles per hour, according to the manufacturer's website. Valeriy Borovyk, the founder of First Contact, declined to comment on whether the drones were used in the operation, but said they are manufactured for complex special operations. Osa, Ukrainian for 'bee,' has several alternatives for how it can be controlled. One of them is the ability to connect to cellular networks, which Russia shuts down when it expects an incoming strike but remain operational when there is an element of surprise, as there was with Sunday's operation. Borovyk said it was the SBU's meticulous preparation ahead of the strike that would have allowed for drone operators to do their job effectively. He said the strike portion of the operation was the cherry on top. 'But this cake, they prepared it, cooked it, put it in a box, decorated it—to continue the metaphor—and all of this was done with great care and detail,' Borovyk said. The truck drivers said to Russian authorities that they weren't told about the contents of the containers and were instructed to stop at gas stations or roadside rest stops near the airports, according to Russian media. Once parked at their designated locations, the roofs of the containers housing the quadcopters were opened remotely, the SBU said, and the drones flew out with a high-pitched buzz. A photo shows Maliuk as he surveyed diagrams of planes where the most vulnerable spots are marked with red crosses. Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the crosses mark where internal fuel tanks are located on each type of plane, which would have caused a major fire when ignited by the small payload from the drones. Celebrating the attack, Zelensky lauded the SBU—and personally thanked Maliuk—for the operation, which he said showed Ukraine is still in the fight. 'Russia's whole narrative, which they spread everywhere, in Europe, in Britain, in America, that they're safe, they're winning the war—this narrative is not working,' Zelensky told reporters Monday. 'They're not safe.' Write to James Marson at and Brenna T. Smith at Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
India.com
04-06-2025
- Politics
- India.com
Ukraines SBU Strikes Kerch Bridge With 1,100kg Underwater Explosives In 2025 Attack
In a strategic hit to Russian supply lines, Ukraine attacked the Kerch Bridge—connecting the Russian mainland with occupied Crimea—for the third time, employing 1,100 kilograms of underwater explosives, in a report provided by Euronews. The Kerch Bridge, built by Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea, serves as a crucial military supply route for Russian troops fighting in southern Ukraine. The assault, launched in the early hours of Tuesday, represents a fresh Ukrainian bid to interfere with key infrastructure within Russian-held territory. Attack Planned Over Several Months The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) published video evidence of the underwater explosion. In an official statement published on Telegram, the agency said that months of preparation led up to the attack, including the time when underwater pillars of the bridge were mined by SBU operatives. The explosives—amounting to more than a ton of TNT—were ignited at 4:44 a.m. local time. The explosion resulted in no civilian deaths, the agency confirmed. "Third Time's a Charm," Declares SBU Chief SBU Chief Vasyl Maliuk, who oversaw the operation, termed it successful and reaffirmed Ukraine's position on Crimea. "Crimea is Ukraine, and any acts of occupation will be dealt with harshly," he stated. "Third time's a charm. The SBU always finishes its plans and never repeats itself," Maliuk added. This is the third successful attack on the bridge, which had earlier been damaged by blasts in October 2022 and July 2023. Ukraine's SBU security service behind the audacious drone attack deep inside Russia now says it has attacked the Kerch bridge in occupied Crimea in a months-long operation. It says SBU agents "mined the supports" of the bridge with 1,100kg of TNT under the water line… — Saint Javelin (@saintjavelin) June 3, 2025 Russian Response And Security Measures After the recent strike, traffic on the Kerch Bridge was halted on Tuesday morning. Russian Telegram media first reported the bridge closure due to debris from drones on the road. The Russian Defence Ministry said it had destroyed three Ukrainian drones over Crimea at night, but it did not explicitly confirm the bridge attack. The Kerch Bridge continues to be of prime importance to Russia, both logistically and symbolically—a pillar of its assertion of jurisdiction over Crimea. Even with heightened security and fortifications since previous attempts at damage, Ukraine's capacity to attack the bridge demonstrates its ongoing reach and operational capabilities well into Russian-occupied territory. Diplomacy Amid Escalation The attack occurred one day before a second round of direct negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul, CNN reported. The session was short—less than an hour—and produced little momentum. The two sides are said to have agreed on a new prisoner exchange, but talks over a possible ceasefire are stuck. Monday also witnessed Ukraine launch a surprise drone attack against Russian nuclear-capable bombers, boosting a week of growing military and diplomatic tensions. As the war drags on, Tuesday's precision strike marks Kyiv's determination to target strategic infrastructure, as well as sending a clear signal about its territorial claims over Crimea.
Boston Globe
03-06-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
As Russia reels from drone attack, Ukraine targets vital Crimea Bridge
Advertisement The Washington Post could not independently verify these claims, and it was not immediately clear how much damage had been caused to the bridge. It was closed soon after the morning explosion but reopened a few hours later. Local Telegram channels in Crimea reported a second explosion Tuesday afternoon, and the bridge was once again closed to traffic for several hours. As of yet, there has been no official confirmation of the attack from Moscow. This would be Ukraine's third attack against the bridge - a key supply route, but also a symbol of Russia's occupation - since the start of Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, a Ukrainian attack using unmanned sea drones killed two civilians and damaged part of the road, closing a section of the bridge for several months. Advertisement 'There is no place for illegal Russian structures on the territory of our state,' Lieutenant General Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service, said in a statement. 'The Crimean Bridge is a completely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops. Crimea is Ukraine, and any form of occupation will be met with a firm response.' Tuesday's attack follows Ukraine's stunning operation targeting Russia's strategic bomber fleet on Sunday, which was also coordinated by Maliuk and overseen by President Volodymyr Zelensky himself. The attack, which was planned over the course of 18 months and involved smuggling dozens of drones armed with explosives deep into Russian territory as far as Siberia and the Far East, reportedly destroyed at least 12 aircraft. Ukraine said the damaged or destroyed aircraft, some of which were nuclear-capable, included A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22 M3 and Tu-160 models - planes Kyiv said Russia had used nearly every night to bomb Ukraine. Most of the details on how the drone attack was carried out remain secret, and it is also not known if the planes reportedly destroyed were in active service. President Vladimir Putin has yet to comment on the attacks, and Russian state media has remained noticeably silent in the wake of Sunday's events. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that the president was being kept abreast of developments and that an investigation was underway. Russia's pro-war military bloggers have been enraged by the attacks, which some dubbed Russia's Pearl Harbor, and said they had caused significant damage to Russia's military capabilities. Hawkish former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday promised revenge against Kyiv for the attacks. Advertisement 'Everything that is supposed to explode, will certainly explode,' wrote Medvedev, who now serves as the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, in a post on Telegram. In the past week, Russia has also launched swarms of drones and missile strikes against Ukrainian cities. The latest exchange of attacks marks an intensification of the conflict, as both sides have been pushed to the negotiating table by President Trump and European allies, and as Moscow has refused any talk of a ceasefire. A Russian strike on the northeastern city of Sumy on Tuesday morning killed four people and injured 24, according to local authorities. Russia and Ukraine met for a brief second round of direct talks in Istanbul on Monday, agreeing to swap dead and captured soldiers, but there was no significant progress toward ending the grueling war or even agreeing to a cease-fire. Ukraine negotiators after the talks said they had requested a meeting of Putin, Zelensky, and Trump to move forward the process, but Peskov on Tuesday dismissed the idea and said any such high-level meeting was 'unlikely.' Moscow on Monday also published its terms of discussion for any peace deal, including Ukraine surrendering more territory to Russia, cutting down the size of its military and not engaging in any alliances or weapons deals with Western nations. Medvedev on Tuesday cast the direct peace talks as a way to ensure a swift Russian victory. 'The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else's delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime,' he wrote.
