COLOGNE, Germany — Ukrainian forces are “well prepared” for a Russian response to Sunday’s drone attacks against long-range bombers parked on air bases across Russia, according to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
Speaking ahead of a June 4 meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Brussels, Pistorius said the scope and timing of a potential Russian counterattack was still unclear. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was expected to brief allies about options at the gathering, he added.
“We can only speculate about what the Russian forces and Putin are willing and able to do,” the German defense minister told reporters, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I believe the Ukrainians are well prepared, in part thanks to the support they are getting from us.”
Ukrainian forces orchestrated a daring series of drone attacks on June 1 against Russian warplanes of types previously used to launch missiles into Ukraine from great distances.
Officials in Kyiv have said more than 41 Russian military aircraft were destroyed in the attack, a claim that Western news agencies have been unable to verify so far.
Satellite imagery showed seven destroyed aircraft — at least three Tu-95 long-range bombers and four Tu-22Ms — at an air base in eastern Siberia alone, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Russian commanders have used the aircraft, combined with shorter-range attack drones, to strike civilian targets in Ukraine in an effort to grind down the population’s morale, according to Pistorius.
Western military officials have started drawing their own lessons from the Ukrainian surprise attack, dubbed “Operation Spiderweb” by Kyiv.
“This shows us that seemingly impenetrable locations maybe are not,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in Washington on Tuesday. “We need to pay more attention to that.”
The idea that high-tech warplanes, concentrated on vulnerable air bases, pose an achilles heel in U.S. war plans has been percolating in Air Force circles for some time.
Sebastian Sprenger is associate editor for Europe at Defense News, reporting on the state of the defense market in the region, and on U.S.-Europe cooperation and multi-national investments in defense and global security. Previously he served as managing editor for Defense News. He is based in Cologne, Germany.