Jubilation at Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb – but is this joy justified?

A web, or a trail to Armageddon?

Noel Wauchope, 3 June 25, https://theaimn.net/jubilation-at-ukraines-operation-spiderweb-but-is-this-joy-justified/#google_vignette

The news media is agog with the glorious success of drones sent deep inside Russia to damage 41 planes. Ukraine claims that these were A-50 surveillance planes, the supersonic Tu-160 and Tu-22 bombers, and the massive Tu-95s, which were developed to carry nuclear bombs and now launch cruise missiles.

The damage is estimated to be $7billion. The targets reached inside Russia included Belaya airbase over 4,000km) from Ukraine, and three other distant airbases. the complex operation was planned in secret, over 18 months.

It was such a clever operation, involving smuggling of drones into Russia and placing them inside containers, which were later loaded on to trucks. Remotely activated mechanisms opened the containers allowing the drones to fly out and make their distant attack.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the “absolutely brilliant” Ukrainian drone attack’ – “produced by Ukraine independently”.

Wow! We’re all delighted, aren’t we, at this surprise, this ingenuity, done all alone by Ukraine – such a demonstration of how the clever Ukrainians will beat the stupid boorish Russians?

There are just a few questions that I would like to see posed, in the corporate media.

I hardly know where to start. Can we believe that:

This was done over 18 months completely without the knowledge of Ukraine’s European partners, in particular Great Britain, France and Germany, who were all consulting with Ukraine over that period, and especially in the last few weeks?
Without the knowledge of the USA, while Senators Lyndsay Graham and Richard Blumenthal, in Ukraine in the past week where they coordinated intensely with the Ukrainian government?
Why was this attack timed exactly at the time of the Istanbul peace talks between Ukraine and Russia?
Did Zelensky not understand that this would at least cast a damper on those talks, upsetting Russia – a bit like the effect on USA if someone attacked US Air Force B-52H bombers and B-2 bombers ?
Well, if Zelensky did understand that, was his intention to sabotage the talks, and provoke Russia into a retaliation, which might bring Europeand even the USA into the war?

The jubilation of the media seems to completely ignore Russia’s stated policy on its use of nuclear weapons, updated in 2024 – nuclear weapons would be authorised for use in response to “attack by [an] adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions”.

We don’t know how Russia will respond to this remarkable and unprecedented attack.

We don’t know how President Trump will respond.

What is clear is that the Istanbul peace talks have been wrecked, and a whole new phase now opens in the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It started out with the intention of a limited attack – the Russians still call it a Special Military Operation. Now Putin has no other option than to declare it a full scale war.