How Putin’s “Pearl Harbor” was planned
The drone attack is described as Russia’s “Pearl Harbor”.The Ukrainian security service planned the complex special operation for over a year and a half.
Now details are emerging about how the drones made it all the way to Siberia.
The Ukrainian security service SBU has carried out a large-scale drone attack against 40 Russian fighter jets at four different military bases in Russia.
The operation was codenamed “Web” and used remotely controlled FPV drones.
A source within Ukraine's intelligence service tells Sky News that the operation targeted planes that bomb Ukrainian cities every night. The source states that the strategic bombers of the A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 types were hit in the attack.
The plan is used when Russia fires long-range missiles at Ukrainian cities, sources told Reuters.
The drones were reportedly smuggled into containers.
How the drones entered the country
The value of the shaken aircraft is estimated to be around 19.5 billion Swedish kronor.In a post on Telegram, the SBU writes that over a third, 34 percent, of Russia's strategic bomber flights have been hit. They also claim that the estimated cost to the Russians is 7 billion dollars, equivalent to 73.5 billion Swedish kronor.
One of the affected air bases is Belaya in Irkutsk in Siberia, which is over 400 miles from Ukraine, writes the Kiev Independent.
Intelligence sources described the operation as "extremely complex" from a logistical point of view and was supposed to have been planned for a year, six months and nine days, according to the Ukrainian president.
First, the SBU, the Ukrainian security service, is said to have smuggled the drones into Russia. Once on Russian territory, the drones are said to have been hidden in the roofs of wooden containers placed on trucks parked near the airfields.
"At the right moment, the roofs of the cabins were opened remotely, and the drones flew to hit Russian bombers," a source told the Kiev Independent.
Zelensky supervised the operation
Vasyl Malyuk, the security service chief, is responsible for the attack, but it is also said to have been supervised by PresidentVolodymyr Zelensky, reports Channel 24, citing sources within the Ukrainian intelligence service.In a post on X, Zelensky praises the attack and describes it as a "brilliant result" that will be rewritten in the history books.
The US was not informed of the attack in advance, a Ukrainian government official told Reuters.
Russia has accused Ukraine of carrying out a “terrorist attack” on air bases, saying it repelled attacks on three of them and that several aircraft caught fire. The Russian Defense Ministry says some people involved in the attacks have been arrested.
Ukrainian sources deny this.
SBU sources tell Sky News that individuals who took part in the operation have been back in Ukraine for a long time and claim that those arrested are just “for show”.
A Russian Tu-22 plane. The plane has been used in attacks on Ukraine and can be equipped with nuclear weapons.
1 / 2 Photo: AP
Mysterious responses to the attack
In Russian pro-Putin channels on Telegram, the large-scale operation is described as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor”.
From the Ukrainian side, there are even more mysterious reactions.
Zelenskyy's chief of staff Andriy Yermak has commented on it by publishing a spider web emoji in a cryptic post on X. The country's deputy foreign minister Serhiy Kyslytsya has uploaded a picture of a playing card where he has edited in a drone that was used in the attack.
"The king of drones," he writes.
Carl Bildt, former prime minister and foreign minister, seems impressed by the Ukrainian operation.
"Not even the 007 films managed to come up with something like this," Bildt writes on X to a clip that is said to show a drone taking off from a truck.
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