This audacious drone assault shows there is fight in Ukraine yet

Calls for Ukraine to agree to a peace on Russia’s terms, no matter how onerous, have been growing over the past year. They cast the Russian military as too mighty, its reserves of blood and oil too vast, for Ukraine to hold out for much longer. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has effectively been told there is no alternative to surrendering. To use the frequent refrain of US president Donald Trump, Ukraine doesn’t ‘hold any cards’.

Yet on Sunday, Ukraine showed that it is far from folding. Over the course of a few hours, it staged a spectacular drone attack deep inside Russian territory. Russian long-range bombers were taken out at at least five airbases, including Belaya in Irkutsk, Siberia – that is, 2,600 miles from Ukraine’s frontlines.

Taking some 18 months to plan, it was an operation of remarkable audacity. Given the distances involved, Ukrainian security services had to work out a way to launch the drones from within Russian territory. They decided that the best way to do this was to pack the weapons on pallets, hide them inside wooden transport containers with remotely controlled lids and then smuggle them in trucks over the border. These were then taken to hidden locations putting the drones within striking distance of specific Russian airbases.

Operation Spiderweb, to give the attack its official title, has proven a huge military success. It has reportedly damaged or destroyed over 40 Russian warplanes, which amounts to over a third of its fleet of strategic bombers. Used to attack Ukraine over the past three years, these Russian Tu-95s and Tu-22s are no longer manufactured, which means they can’t be replaced.

Ukraine has once again demonstrated its tremendous capacity for resistance. After a new round of peace talks took place in Istanbul today, it has shown that rumours of its inexorable defeat have been greatly exaggerated. That it still has plenty of cards to play, or at least plenty of fight in it.

In some ways, this has been the tale of the war. At every stage, Russia and Western nations alike have profoundly underestimated Ukrainians’ determination to fight for their nation and their way of life. From the very moment Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, few in Moscow or indeed Washington expected Ukraine to put up much of a fight. US military chief Mark Milley anticipated that Kyiv would fall within 72 hours.

But what the Kremlin and the White House thought would be a quick, days-long conquest has turned out to be nothing of the sort. Far from rolling over, the Ukrainian people have fought back. The Ukrainian army pushed Russian forces out of Kyiv within weeks, before taking back vast swathes of land in Ukraine’s east the following autumn.

Since then, Ukraine’s progress has slowed amid shortages of manpower and weaponry, with Russia slowly gaining the upper hand. Yet, as this weekend’s spectacular operation shows, Ukraine remains steadfast in its resistance and is still capable of dealing significant blows to the invading force.

While the timing, scale and sheer chutzpah of Operation Spiderweb was a surprise, the fact it was a drone attack wasn’t. Over the past three years, the Ukrainian military has led the way in military-drone technology, particularly with its first-person-view (FPV) units. Having ramped up production of these to around 200,000 a month, it has been using drones not only to hold the frontline, but also to launch long-range attacks on Russian territory. Targets have included military bases, air defences and oil and gas facilities.

Its most stunning success up until this weekend had arguably been a naval-drone attack in October 2022, deep inside Sevastopol harbour in Russian-controlled Crimea, which disabled the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Since then, its drones have destroyed Russian helicopters over the Black Sea and, at the start of this year, several fighter jets. And now it has taken out a significant proportion of Russia’s long-range bombers, which have long been visiting destruction on Ukrainian cities and towns from the air.

None of this is to downplay the gravity of Ukraine’s situation. Its independence remains imperilled and swathes of its eastern territory look to be lost. Russian forces fight on and continue to subject towns and cities countrywide to regular missile and drone bombardments – just last night, it rained down destruction on parts of the eastern region of Kharkiv and the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian forces, struggling for manpower, are slowly but surely losing ground.

But as this weekend’s drone attack shows, Ukraine’s hand really isn’t as weak as those calling for it to give in to Moscow suggest. Indeed, Russia’s advance, expending the lives of hundreds of thousands of its own soldiers, is incredibly slow. As one analyst points out, ‘Moscow has gone from occupying about 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory in late 2023 to roughly 19 per cent today’. This is not a war that Russia is in danger of winning outright any time soon. Ukraine’s resistance, built on courage, resilience and no little military ingenuity, has seen to that.

Of course, Ukraine is not just fighting for immediate military wins – it is fighting to determine what the peace looks like in the long run, whether that is decided in Istanbul or elsewhere. Fighting for a peace not on the terms of an irredentist Moscow or a sceptical White House, but on terms acceptable to the Ukrainian people.

And this stunning drone assault suggests there is still plenty of fight in Ukraine yet.

Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.