Ukraine’s extraordinary attack deep inside Russia has, at a stroke, rewritten the rules of modern war. On Sunday a swarm of small drones, each costing under $500, rose over four Russian airfields deep inside Siberia and the Arctic and destroyed over forty strategic bombers reportedly worth over $7 billion. Thanks to meticulous planning, sophisticated military imagination and an underdog’s boldness of vision, Kyiv’s forces have landed a stunning blow on their far stronger opponent, opening a new chapter in the history of human conflict.
The question that will be haunting Putin is – what’s next? Ukraine’s famously stone-faced chief of military intelligence, or HUR, Major-General Kyrylo Budanov, has built his covert operations forces into a weapon as deadly, if not more so, than Israel’s Mossad, its only international rival. And like the Biblical champion Goliath, it is precisely the vast lumbering size of Russia that makes it fatally vulnerable to small but precisely aimed projectiles from David’s small but deadly slingshot.
Many of the details of Sunday’s drone operation come from the Ukrainian side, so may be taken with a pinch of salt. But the basic logistics of the strike are in no doubt. Ukrainian military engineers, possibly already inside Russia, covertly loaded dozens of explosives-laden drones into special compartments set into the roofs of standard 40-foot steel shipping containers. Using a network of haulage companies set up for the purpose, Ukrainian operatives recruited truck drivers via commercial apps to drive their loads to specific designations next to military airfields thousands of miles away from the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine’s extraordinary attack deep inside Russia has, at a stroke, rewritten the rules of modern war. On Sunday a swarm of small drones, each costing under $500, rose over four Russian airfields deep inside Siberia and the Arctic and destroyed over forty strategic bombers reportedly worth over $7 billion. Thanks to meticulous planning, sophisticated military imagination and an underdog’s boldness of vision, Kyiv’s forces have landed a stunning blow on their far stronger opponent, opening a new chapter in the history of human conflict.
The question that will be haunting Putin is – what’s next? Ukraine’s famously stone-faced chief of military intelligence, or HUR, Major-General Kyrylo Budanov, has built his covert operations forces into a weapon as deadly, if not more so, than Israel’s Mossad, its only international rival. And like the Biblical champion Goliath, it is precisely the vast lumbering size of Russia that makes it fatally vulnerable to small but precisely aimed projectiles from David’s small but deadly slingshot.
Many of the details of Sunday’s drone operation come from the Ukrainian side, so may be taken with a pinch of salt. But the basic logistics of the strike are in no doubt. Ukrainian military engineers, possibly already inside Russia, covertly loaded dozens of explosives-laden drones into special compartments set into the roofs of standard 40-foot steel shipping containers. Using a network of haulage companies set up for the purpose, Ukrainian operatives recruited truck drivers via commercial apps to drive their loads to specific designations next to military airfields thousands of miles away from the Ukrainian border.