At dawn on June 1, the Ukrainian military secret service (Gur) hit a series of Russian bases with drones. The attack took place in a way never seen before: the drones took off from automated holder carriers, using artificial intelligence to perform the operation without direct involvement of human operators. The calculation of the damage inflicted is not yet complete, but the foundations of Russian strategic aviation in Onlenja (Mumansk), Belaja (Irkutsk, Siberia), Ivanovo and Djagilevo (near Moscow), and perhaps also the naval base of Severomorsk (Mumansk) and another base even on the AMUR, would have been affected.

According to what reported by Ukraine, it would have been damaged up to 41 heavy bombing planes, including TU-95, TU-22 and at least one A-50 from radar surveillance; The latter, if confirmed, would be the last operational that had the Russian aviation supplied.

The numbers, of course, are all to be verified, but at the moment the visual confirmations speak of a dozen destroyed and as many damaged aircraft; In the current Russian logistical conditions (chronic lack of parts of spare parts and assembly chains of the bombers closed for twenty years) a damaged bomber is a bomber that in this war will no longer fly.

The genesis of the cobweb operation

The action was conducted by the Gur by infiltrating the trucks in depth that transported the “prefabricated houses” on the fake platform inside which the drones scheduled in advance were kept to perform the attack. Once the trucks parked in the areas scheduled for a short distance from the target bases, the roofs of the prefabricated houses opened and the drones followed the attack plan governed by the AI.

In total we speak of 110-150 drones, some of which as a reconnaissance, through which the gur has followed and coordinated the action remotely by registering it. At the end of the action, at least one of the trucks was self -destroyed when Russian safety identified it. It is not clear whether the truck drivers were unsuspecting Russian or Ukrainian agents: the Russian police support the first hypothesis, and claims to have identified the “mind” Ukrainian of the operation, of course Bosco birds.

The action that changes the war?

The action is extremely significant, as was the interruption of the Kerch bridge or the sinking of the Moskva. But it is not a “military turning point of war” and does not impact the operations on the front. As usual, the military reality on the field must be separated, where the conflict is decided, and the virtual one fighting on the media front, where the goal are not the enemy armed forces, but the population and public opinion not only Russian and Ukrainian, but above all the western one, whose morality can heavily influence what we continue to repeat to be the only true variable of the conflict: western support (especially European). Support that Moscow hopes to stop and that Kiev wants to keep at all costs.

Part of the media war conducted by Putin to break down Ukrainian and European morality is represented by the terrorist bombing campaign on Ukrainian cities. These are “terrorist” bombings as they do not aim to affect the opponent’s war effort (they almost never affect military objectives), but to terrorize the population in the same way in which Luftwaffe hit London during the battle of England (in the video below the Russian attack of 3 June 2025 on the Ukrainian city of Sumy with armed missiles with clusters).

Terrorizing the population by affecting civil objectives would theoretically be used to break down the morality of the population (as already in London, it does not seem to work today in Kiev), but above all to demonstrate to the European public opinion that the resistance is futile and assimilation to inevitable Russia.

These bombings that took place initially weekly with waves of hundreds of missiles, with the progressive exhaustion of the stocks have become monthly and foresee less and less missiles and more and more drones, which have a much lower destructive capacity. Apart from drones, the missiles still products and/or available by Russian are of two types:

• The ballistic ones, very fast, with very curved trajectory, very difficult to intercept but tend to be not very precise due to the ineffectiveness of the Glonass system;
• Those from cruise, more slow and easy to intercept but also much more precise thanks to the internal guide (there are also very fast ones, the “hypersonic”, however extremely rare and expensive, and also not very precise), which are those mainly produced.

Now, these cruise missiles are largely launched by the strategic bombers, modified for some time to use cruise missiles with nuclear newspapers: they make the launch from far away, even from the caspio, safe from the Ukrainian air defense which is now very strong, and these modern missiles together with the drones still manage to saturate the defenses and to hit the Ukrainian cities monthly. Even if these missiles do not alter the course of the battle at the front, they kill dozens of civilians and in addition they give way to pro-Russian commentators to emphasize the internet as “resistance is futile and inevitable assimilation” …

TODAY, UKRAINIAN INTELLIGENCE REPORTEDLY LAUNCHED 117 Attack Drones from Trucks That Had Been Placed Near Russian Air Bases. The Tasked Several Collects This Morning Via @umbraspace and My First Images Have Already Started Processing. What to Remarkable later in Well-Executed … pic.twitter.com/lzxulw8Jnk

– Chris Biggers (@csbiggers) June 2, 2025

Well: destroying strategic bombers limits Russian abilities to hit Ukrainian cities. In addition, it raises Ukrainian and European morality, depresses the Russian one and further reduces the skills of the already debilitated Russian aviation just as the Ukrainian one receives the first Norwegian F-16s. This of course contributes to altering the balance of the aerial war, which in turn, over time, will affect that of the terrestrial war.

However, what I find most interesting is the methodology used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrfshcqeea8

This is a clear example of an operation at a strategic level, as it affects operational structures at the highest level: Russia had a maximum of 120 strategic bombers, of which almost half not operational and used for cannibalization; Some had already been lost in the last three years.

Losing another twenty (or even forty if the Ukrainian numbers turned out to be exact in one fell swoop) would be a terrible blow for Russian aerial power.

Now, normally to inflict a strategic blow, strategic structures are used, such as heavy bombers or long -range ballistic missiles. Ukraine does not have any of the two types, and instead employed sabotage: the action was not managed by Ukrainian aviation, but by the military secret services. A bit like the actions of the British Commandos against the German “Wunderwaffen” during the Second World War. We all at least heard of “The heroes of Telemark”, or also of the famous Soviets “” Soviets “…

Well: while their Russian heirs were stupidly sacrificed in the early hours of the special military operation, the Ukrainian ones have been silently at work for three years.

During the war we have heard dozens of times of mysterious fires in the industries and refineries of all of Russia, and also of mysterious attacks of drones in very far from the front; Well: now we have a clearer idea of ​​how these actions take place. Simply, the Russian Federation is profoundly infiltrated by a real illegal and/or pro-Ukraine “spider web”.

Like this could have happened in a detective country so closely controlled by the KGB heirs security services may seem strange to most, but it is the effect of Putin’s policy. On the one hand, the war has gradually sucked in more and more military resources and therefore also police, leaving the territory without protection in large part (remember the undisputed “ride” of Pigozhin from Rostov to the outskirts of Moscow with only five thousand men?) …

Anatomy of a strategic sabotage in Russia

And this also applies to aerial defense, which in addition to being worn by Ukrainian attacks is also dispersed on a vast territory. On the other hand, with its ideology that has always denied the existence of a Ukrainian national identity, Putin finds himself having two to six million Russian citizens of Ukrainian ethnic groups, which speak Russian as a native speaker, perfectly inserted in Russian society, and probably more than happy to offer the gur a support base for the acquisition of information and now also for the execution of operations in complete safety.

The organization of a clandestine network in enemy territory takes time: not months, but years. After the short campaign of 2001, for example, the Taliban took eight years to reorganize the guerrilla war in Afghanistan; For Ukrainians it is simpler, because they have the resources of a nation state with large previous traditions in the subversive field: the KGB was also …

After three years of war now their network is passing from the simple information collection phase and recruitment to that of direct action. To make things even more worrying for Russia, there is another factor that little is talked about, and which could instead be if not at the basis of the Ukrainian clandestine organization, at least a long -term support factor.

The real Ukrainian operation in Russia

Remember the “Libera Russia Legion”? He participated in the first Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk, and then disappeared from the media screens … The operation in the Kursk represented a successful diversion for Ukrainians, but also an opportunity for unique infiltration for the Russian opponents militias, whose structure was more insurrection than non -conventional type, and today these Russian fighters could be infiltrated in depth in the territory of the Federation, Equipped by Ukraine and in coordination with the Gur. In this perspective, the “cobweb” operation takes on a much less surprising aspect.

One aspect remains to be commented on: what may western involvement have been in this operation? I can only make hypotheses. NATO is not monolithic, and the current equivocal policy of the Trump administration makes an involvement of the alliance highly unlikely as such: the risk of news escapes would have been intolerable for the gur.

The external support and “nationally” of individual governments and services is more likely, and obviously the first to come to mind is the British Mi6: this is exactly the type of action in which it is a specialist. But it is also true that the information and technological skills of the Ukrainians are arguing, this support may not have been necessary at all.

The coordinates of the aerial bases have always been known at Gur (the airports do not move much), and the presence of large planes on the slopes cannot be hidden not only to commercial satellites, but not even to the peasants of Ukrainian origin who live in the area, or to the militia of free Russia that stand in the wooded stain next to it.