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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the operation an “absolutely brilliant outcome.” Over 100 Ukrainian-made drones, hidden inside wooden sheds on trucks parked near five airbases deep inside Russian territory, were released and remotely steered into Russian warplanes in an intelligence operation code-named “Spider’s Web” that took 18 months to plan.
Ukrainian officials said that they had verified that 41 Russian planes, including strategic bombers, were hit, and half of those were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
The operation was a PR coup, but it should be judged by its effect on the war, not on public perception. Many of Ukraine’s most stunning operations have been spectacular enough to sell Ukraine’s western partners on the war yet have had a devastating effect on Ukraine’s war effort. The offensive in Russia’s Kursk region was a bold operation that made it look like Ukraine could take the war to enemy territory. But Ukrainians failed to hold onto any land that could be used in negotiations, and the operation failed to divert Russian troops from eastern Ukraine as intended. Instead, it left the Donbas front, where the real war was being fought, weakened and vulnerable, and it cost Ukraine horrific losses of its best trained fighters and most advanced Western-supplied military equipment.
As for Spider’s Web, sober accounting suggests an outcome less brilliant than Kiev had claimed. The U.S. assesses that the actual number of Russian warplanes hit was 20 and that the number destroyed was 10. How much of an impact Russia’s loss of those bombers will cause is disputed, but some analysts think battlefield conditions will be mostly unaffected. As Geoffrey Roberts, professor emeritus of history at University College Cork and a specialist in Soviet military policy, told The American Conservative, “As always with Ukrainian actions, there is a theatrical element. I don’t think it has any strategic significance in relation to the course and outcome of the war.”
As happened with the Kursk offensive, Ukraine runs the risk that an audacious operation could lead to a Russian response that proves more devastating in military terms. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that, during a recent phone call, “President Putin did say, and very strongly that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has confirmed that Putin told Trump that there would be a Russian response “when and how our military deems appropriate.”
Since then, in a series of massive drone and long-range missile attacks across Ukraine, the Russian military has struck workshops where drones and weapons are designed, built, and repaired, as well as warehouses where military equipment is stored. There are also reports that Russian drones have destroyed many of Ukraine’s Western-supplied howitzers, long-range missiles, and air defense munitions that were held in an underground bunker.
And yet, U.S. officials believe that Russia’s promised retaliation “has not happened yet in earnest.” They believe the looming attack “is likely to be a significant, multi-pronged strike” that could be “huge, vicious and unrelenting.”
And the danger is not just to Ukraine. Since the planes targeted in the drone attack were no ordinary planes, but bombers capable of carrying nuclear bombs as part of a Russian response to a nuclear strike, the operation poses risks for nuclear arms control.
The New START Treaty aims to verifiably reduce the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia. It went into effect in February 2011 and was extended until February 2026. It is the last remaining strategic arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia. It contains transparency measures for verifying each side’s compliance with its obligations. An important component of that transparency, per Richard Sakwa, Emeritus Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, is that “these strategic bombers have to be kept in the open so that they can be observed from space.”
Keeping the strategic bombers open to satellite imagery was meant to facilitate verification of compliance with the treaty, not to facilitate an attack on nuclear architecture. After Ukraine’s attack, Russia may feel tempted to reconsider its obligations under the New START Treaty. Sakwa says the Ukrainian attack “strikes a blow against the arms control regime.” And that is a danger to the world.
Moreover, Operation Spider’s Web, as with many previous escalations in this war, risks drawing the West into a regional war. Given the recent history of the West providing the Ukrainian armed forces with satellite imagery and targeting information, there is the danger that Russia will suspect Western involvement.
Following the Ukrainian attacks on two Russian railway bridges just before the attack on Russia’s strategic airfields, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “It is obvious that everything is being done by the Ukrainian side, but it would be helpless without the support of the British. Although who knows, maybe the US special services are also involved there by inertia, but the British are there 100%.”
Operation Spider’s Web exposed serious Russian vulnerabilities. But those vulnerabilities will not slow the Russian advance in Ukraine. The operation will not help Ukraine win the war and may, as with other spectacular operations, contribute to its losing it. And there are the wider dangers of undermining the arms control regime and pulling the West into a wider war. Ukrainian intelligence spun an impressive spider’s web. Now they—and we—risk getting caught in it.