Why Ukraine shows that wars can still be redefined

By launching a bold drone attack against aerodromes and combat planes inside Russia, Ukraine continues to change the way wars will develop in the 21st century, according to US officials and military analysts.

US and European security officials said that the damage caused by attacks, which took place on Sunday, were still being evaluated. But they estimated that up to 20 Russian strategic aircraft could have been severely destroyed or damaged, which represents a hard blow for the long -range attack capacity of Russia.

The authorities said that Russian losses included six long-range strategic bombers TU-95 and four TU-22m, as well as A-50 combat aircraft, which are used to detect aerial defenses and remote control missiles.

The attack, known as the web operation, damaged Moscow’s precious strategic capacity. But also, equally significant, demonstrated the ability of Ukraine to attack almost anywhere in Russia and destroy combat planes that cost US $ 100 million or more with drones of only US $ 600, according to an American defense official.

American officials said that Ukraine did not notify Donald Trump that forces of the Ukrainian security service, or SBU, were planning the attack, which aimed several air bases within Russia, including one in Siberia.

To carry out the attacks, Ukraine deployed agents away from their borders. For example, the distance between kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and the Belaya Air Base, one of the objectives, is almost five thousand kilometers. The drones were introduced to contraband in Russia and packaged in wood transport containers with tapas aimed at remote control and then loaded into trucks, said the SBU in a statement.

An American defense officer compared the Ukrainian maneuver with the Israeli operation of last year directed against the Hizbulá operations in Lebanon.

The president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, said on Monday that drone attacks had “seriously weakened” the military operations of Russia.

“‘Telaraña’ showed how modern war really looks and why it is so important to go a step forward with technology,” he wrote on social networks.

Zelenski said the operation had been preparing for a year and a half.

American officials said they expected Russia to take significant reprisals against Ukraine for attacks. Until now, US intelligence services have not identified possible attacks by Russia, but officials believe that Moscow could resume drones attacks against civil objectives, attack the energy network or launch new waves of ballistic missiles of intermediate scope.

Since the Russian forces invaded the country for the first time in February 2022, Ukraine has been adapting, or “Macgyverizo”, cheap and easy to get commercial drones to turn them into effective combat weapons that it has deployed on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian forces, using portable missiles fired from the shoulder called Javelins and Stingers, frustrated convoys of Russian tanks that were heading to kyiv at the beginning of the conflict.

Ukraine installed rocket systems in fast boats, increasing its naval war capacity. The Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian objectives with Turkish attack drones and manufacturing plastic aircraft to launch grenades and other ammunition. They attacked Russian ships in the Black Sea with Harpoon anti -man -missile missiles.

The United States has helped the Ukrainian manufacture of drones, spending millions to increase its production capacity and transfer part of the key technology.

But Ukraine “has now brought the war to the next level,” said Evelyn Farkas, former deputy deputy vice -secretary of American defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.

Kateryna Stepanenko, an analyst at Russia of the Institute for the Study of War, said the attacks show that “no place in Russia is safe” and that Ukraine is “shaping a new type of war.”

A high American official said it was too early to evaluate the total effect of the Ukrainian operation on Russian strategic bombers, partly because the Russians could repair some of the attacked aircraft.

The official said the drones caused “significant” damage, but that the attack alone would not force Russia to reduce their offensive operations within Ukraine.

It is not surprising that they have kept the operation secret, officials said, since any filtration would have put in danger the forces that carried it out.

Ukraine has always protected his operational safety; Even more in recent months, since senior national security officials of the Trump government inadvertently revealed US operational attack plans in Chats of the Signal Group. There is currently no joint planning between the United States and Ukraine on attacks in Russia.

American officials said that their Ukrainian counterparts understood that Russian strategic bombers, who can transport nuclear weapons, were out of the limits of the United States. The Ukrainians did not inform the Americans of their plans, knowing that the United States would oppose.

A defense officer of a European country in the OTAN said that Ukrainian attacks have already resulted in debates about whether the allies had to reassess their vulnerabilities. The official, like other interviewees for this article, was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue of security and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“When it comes to large military bases that have many airplanes parked on the track, the lesson of the Ukrainian attack is that such an attack can occur potentially at any time,” said Bendett on Monday. “At this time, our bases are unlikely to have complete protection against short -range threats.”

James Patton Rogers, an expert at war with drones from Cornell University, said the Western powers were especially vulnerable in the numerous military bases they have in other countries, such as small, called Neenufars, the Middle East and Africa, where the variety of extremist groups and other terrain conditions make it almost impossible to apply a standard protection type.

That was the case of death in 2024 of three soldiers of the American Army Reserve in a remote desert base of Jordan, near the Syrian border, known as Torre 22, where Rogers said that an Iraqi attack drone seemed to have followed an American drone while preparing to land, and then attacked.

Some officials said that Ukraine drones attacks could be considered a gift for the United States. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican for South Carolina, who has repeatedly sustained that Ukraine is getting damaging Russia’s warlike capabilities – an adversary of the United States – said Sunday on social networks that “the always ingenious Ukraine used creative tactics of war with drones to successfully attack bombers and Russian military bombers.”

Ben Hodges, former president of the American army in Europe, said in an interview on Monday that “it can be said that there has been a significant reduction in Russia’s ability to launch cruise missiles.”

But Hodges and several other people said that Ukraine attacks should, at least, force Trump’s government to rethink their plans for an antimile shield of “golden dome”, which President Trump presented last month.

The pentagon is preparing plans for the project. Government officials claim that it will be a new generation military system designed to protect against various ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles deployed by adversaries such as Russia.

But the antimisile shield, as conceived, would not protect the United States from the types of drones used by Ukraine.

Ukraine attacks against Russian airfields show that the US $ 175 billion that Trump wants to spend on the shield project “are a poor application of resources,” said Alexander Vindman, the former official of the US army born in Ukraine, who was part of the National Security Council in 2019.

The success of Ukraine attack against Russian strategic bombers shows that the United States should study “how to defend our strategic assets against drone attacks,” he said.