Today, a brilliant operation was carried out — on enemy territory, targeting only military objectives, specifically the equipment used to strike Ukraine. Russia suffered significant losses — entirely justified and deserved. President Zelenskyy, 1 June 2025
Over the course of the Ukraine war since the Russian full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has slowly but surely evolved what might now be one of the most effective long-range strike systems in the world. Once the preserve of only superpowers and some major powers, the proliferation of drones, open-source sensors and digital command and control systems means that long-range strike is now a commodity available to almost every nation state, and non-state actor, with a few million dollars and the desire to reach out and strike their adversary.
The Ukrainian strikes on Russia in the past 24 hours are just the latest iteration of Ukraine’s evolving, and increasingly sophisticated, long-range strike complex. If you would like to track this evolution, you can see my previous articles on this topic here, here, here and here.
Details are still emerging, but it appears Ukraine was able to penetrate attack forces into Russia and undertake strikes on at least four different airfields at which long-range aviation was based. The operation, which was apparently codenamed “Spiderweb,” targeted the following Russian airbases: Belaya, Diaghilevo, Olenya and Ivanovo as well other airbases in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ryazan, and Amur regions.
While there has already been a lot of reporting on the actual strikes, and its possible outcomes, the aim of this piece is to provide an initial assessment of what the strikes mean for the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, and for the direction of war more broadly.
