How Ukraine Used Cheap Drones and a Lot of Ingenuity to Strike a Major Blow Against Russia

Operation Spider Web — an absolutely unprecedented event that they’ll be making movies about in the not too distant future.

It’s been a long time since we had some good news about the war in Ukraine, and on Sunday the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) delivered in the most spectacular way possible by taking out a significant number of Russia’s heavy bombers using a handful of cheap, disposable FPV drones.

Now there are two things you need to know about these bombers. Firstly, they’re the ones that Russia uses to regularly launch mass-missile attacks at Ukrainian cities.

Secondly, they do this in the most cowardly way possible. During one of the countless, regular mass missile strikes, these bombers never fly anywhere near Ukraine. They launch their missiles over the Caspian Sea, far out of range of Ukraine’s air defences.

And they take off and land at air bases far out of range of Ukraine’s own missiles (some drones can reach them but given their smaller warheads they’ve only had limited effect).

This has obviously presented Ukraine with a problem for a while now — how to stop Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of Ukraine’s cities?

The answer, it turns out, is with some cheap little drones and a lot of ingenuity.

Operation Spider Web — a year-and-a-half in the planning — saw 137 FPV drones equipped with small explosives smuggled into Russia and then hidden in the roofs of small wooden cabins.

These cabins were then transported across Russia on trucks. When the trucks stopped near four Russian air bases, the roofs of the cabins retracted and the drones flew out and headed towards the Russian bombers.

The full extent of the damage is not yet known, but the SBU claims to have hit more than 40 aircraft, disabling a third of Russia’s heavy bomber fleet, and inflicted $7 billion in damage.

And it’s the money involved that really show not only how incredible this operation was, but the dramatically changing face of modern warfare.

Each of these FPV drones costs only a few hundred dollars, and yet they’re being used to destroy Russian military equipment costing millions — a single Russian A-50 radar aircraft is estimated to be worth round $350 million.

And in a marvellous twist, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday evening claimed the base of operations for Spider Web was located “directly next to FSB headquarters in one of their regions”.

Whether or not Spider Web succeeds in stopping Russian mass-missile attacks remains to be seen, but the positive psychological boost in Ukraine is badly needed right now.

“Christmas has come early this year”, one friend told me.

There is of course the question of how Russia will respond. They have plenty of ballistic missiles, and even the Oreshnik, which they can deploy to cover up their embarrassment.

But for now at least, Ukraine is celebrating a huge win.

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Talks and Sanctions

As I write this, it’s 131 days since Donald Trump took office, promising to end the war in Ukraine in 100 days, and by most measures, we’re further from peace than when he started.

But there could be some positive movement in the coming days. Let’s begin this look back at the last two weeks by looking ahead to the next one.

Firstly, there could be big things happening in the US Senate this week. For a while now, there has been a bill on the cards that, if passed and enacted, would finally see the White House exerting the first real pressure on Russia since Trump took power.

The bill, led by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, would see sweeping new sanctions imposed on Moscow, including 500% tariffs on imports from countries who continue to purchase Russian products like oil, gas, and uranium.

One of the main aims is to target and deter countries that use Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” to purchase oil and gas, particularly India and China.

If these two countries stopped purchasing Russian oil and gas, it would deprive the Kremlin of billions of dollars in revenue and severely affect its ability to not only wage war in Ukraine, but keep its economy afloat.

While the bill would still need Trump’s sign-off, which is by no means guaranteed, it’s worth noting just how much support it has.

Despite Trump’s reluctance so far to take any action against Russia, according to Graham, the bill has the support of 82 out of 100 US Senators — an encouraging reminder that Trump’s apparent fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t entirely reflective of US politics as a whole.

Graham has said the Senate should “start moving” on the bill this coming week, in large part because of the other big thing that is happening — the second round of Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Istanbul on Monday.

What should we expect from these talks? Absolutely nothing.

After the first round, during which Russia gave up any pretence of wanting peace or a ceasefire, Trump and Putin had a call in which the Russian president said he would draft a “memorandum regarding a potential future peace treaty”.

This is as wishy-washy as it sounds, and the only person who seems to have seen it for anything but the stalling tactic it so obviously is was Trump, something which is causing ever-increasing frustrations in Kyiv.

“The fact the Americans believe that peace can be achieved through conversations is a dangerous sign,” one lawmaker told me after the call, adding: “We can only achieve peace if Russia sees that the whole world is united against their aggression and then they have to compromise.”

There’s nothing to suggest that Russia will back down from its maximalist demands whilst insisting that the war can only end when the “root causes” are addressed.

This term, “root causes”, is the flavour of the day in Kremlin propaganda and will no doubt be repeated endlessly over the coming weeks and months in a desperate attempt to spin the war as anything but the imperialist, genocidal, land-grabbing endeavour that it is.

Here’s a guide to the “nonsensical” term in case you want to equip yourself in some social media arguments with pro-Kremlin loons.

But there could be one positive to come out of Monday’s talks — Graham has said he hopes the lack of anything tangible will make clear that the only way to get Russia to end the war is through concrete action. 

“So when this two-week period is over, I think it’d be pretty clear to everybody (that) Russia is playing a game at the expense of the world, not just the United States”, he said.

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A Weekend of Aerial Terror

Here in Kyiv we’re no strangers to being bombed — we’ve endured regular mass missile attacks and almost nightly swarms of kamikaze drones for years.

But last weekend was different. A massive drone and ballistic missile attack on Friday night was one of the loudest I’ve ever experienced.

I spent most of the early hours of Saturday in my hallway, firstly feeling the walls shake as the ballistic missiles exploded, and then hours listening to drones flying over my flat. It was not pleasant.

Then on Saturday night, Russia launched another combined missile and drone attack, an unprecedented event.

Then they did it again on Sunday night. Three nights straight of missiles and drones.

But the really concerning thing is the ever-increasing number of drones — Sunday night saw Russia launch a record 355 at Ukraine.

Which begs the question — how bad can it get? President Volodymyr Zelensky this week said Russia is aiming to produce 500 Shahed-type drones a day, which could basically mean nightly 500-strong drone attacks.

He also didn’t rule out that number reaching 1,000, which is, quite frankly, terrifying.

Obviously, Ukraine is trying to take steps to counter this threat, and this week saw the unveiling of a new AI-powered gun turret called “Sky Sentinel”.

So if you’re wondering how you can help Ukraine defend its cities from Russian terror attacks, there’s actually a fundraiser to build ten of them.

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Russian Troops amassing

And if you needed any more evidence of Russia’s intentions to only escalate violence, look no further than Ukraine’s northern Sumy Oblast.

Putin last week announced he had ordered his military to create a “security buffer zone” along the border, which, according to Ukraine, now means some 50,000 troops are amassed there.

Russian forces have already launched small operations to capture some villages in the region, but obviously, the fear in Ukraine is that this is all a pretence for a large-scale offensive in the coming weeks.

The picture is rather murky at present as Ukraine’s military isn’t being very talkative about the situation there, but a source did tell the Kyiv Independent that these are not just poorly-trained cannon fodder troops, but include elite paratroopers and marines.

Ukraine is taking the threat seriously and has increased civilian evacuations from villages near the border, but whether or not a large-scale offensive materialises remains to be seen.

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The Mysterious Death of Portnov

On May 21, a Ukrainian man called Andriy Portnov was shot dead in front of his children outside the American School in Madrid, Spain.

Portnov has long been a controversial figure in Ukraine, was widely seen as pro-Russian and served in the administration of pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

He fled Ukraine after the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, managing to cross the border despite a martial law ban on men leaving the country already being in effect.

Portnov was also believed to be heavily involved in numerous corruption schemes and was actually sanctioned by the US for this in 20211.

Suffice to say he was not a popular figure in Ukraine.

But just exactly who shot him and why is, at present, unknown.