On June 1, Ukraine launched a major drone attack on four Russian air bases—including one in Siberia, roughly 3,000 miles from Kyiv. The shocking, carefully coordinated operation marked the longest-range assault that Ukraine has carried out since the full-scale war began with Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Ukraine said the operation, which involved 117 drones that were smuggled into Russia on trucks, destroyed or damaged 41 Russian aircraft—including nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks—dubbed “Operation Spider’s Web”—will “undoubtedly be in history books.”
The drone strikes came as Russia continues to ramp up attacks on Ukraine, including by launching its largest air assault of the war so far last week. Notably, the attacks on Russian airbases came just one day before Russia and Ukraine were set to hold a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul. The negotiations still went forward, but they only lasted about an hour and did not yield significant progress toward ending the war.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been pushing hard for a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv, has not yet commented on the Ukrainian operation. The Kremlin also appears to have been stunned into relative silence by the scope and scale of the drone assault, and there are open questions as to how it might respond.
For insights on the likely impact that the Ukrainian operation will have on the war and the peace talks—and how Trump might turn down the temperature—Foreign Policy spoke with George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Foreign Policy: Ukraine says that this operation inflicted $7 billion worth of damage on Russia. It will take time for a full assessment, but based on what we know, how significant was this attack in terms of its impact on Russia’s military capabilities?
George Beebe: I doubt it had much of an impact on Russia’s ability to continue fighting the war in Ukraine the way it has been. The Russians are involved in a war of attrition. That’s the way they want to fight this war. [Such a strategy] plays to their advantages, and that means they’re not looking for sudden breakthroughs—not looking for weaknesses in Ukraine’s lines that they can penetrate and exploit. They’re not looking for means to outflank the Ukrainians suddenly through World War II-style blitzkrieg maneuvers.
They’re trying, over time, to grind down Ukraine’s ability to put well-trained and well-equipped forces on the battlefield. And they are making significant progress on that. Right now, you’re not seeing that on the map so much. The Russians are not conquering large swaths of Ukrainian territory very quickly. But when you look at the indicators that matter in judging progress in a war of attrition, the Ukrainians are really struggling.
This kind of dramatic strike deep into Russian territory in Murmansk and Irkutsk—places far, far away from the Ukrainian battlefield—gets a lot of attention, particularly in Western media, and obviously it is meant to get that attention. But it doesn’t significantly impair Russia’s ability to continue to fight the war in Ukraine the way it has been. It doesn’t change that fundamental correlation between Ukraine’s military industrial capacity—its ability to train and field troops on the battlefield—and Russia’s quite substantial materiel and structural advantages in those regards.
FP: Did this operation deal a significant blow to Russia’s nuclear triad [its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear capabilities]?
GB: I don’t think it’s a significant blow to Russia’s nuclear triad. It looks like the Ukrainians may have critically damaged or destroyed a half-dozen to a dozen strategic bombers. The Russians have many of those. In terms of really affecting Russia’s nuclear triad, I think the answer is no—this attack probably didn’t do that.
But it did strike against Russia’s strategic nuclear triad, and that, in and of itself, is something that is quite alarming. The Russians recently revised their nuclear-use doctrine, and one of the things that they specifically said in there was that if there are attacks by an adversary on important state or military infrastructure that would disrupt responses, potentially by Russia’s nuclear forces, that is potentially a trigger for Russian nuclear use. And it went on to say that any kind of aggression by a nonnuclear state, with the participation or support of a nuclear state, is considered their joint attack.
Now, would those criteria fit in this particular situation? We need to be concerned that the Russians might believe that it does. They might well look at this situation and decide that this was a joint attack—that the Ukrainians could not have pulled this off without the knowledge and support of the United States or our NATO allies in Europe. Now, whether that is true or not, the danger here is that Russians might perceive that to be the case.
We’re dealing with a situation here where the Russians may be concerned that Trump is doing just what people accuse [Russian President Vladimir] Putin of doing—namely, talking about peace while conducting war, . And there are going to be Russians that are going to look at this and tell Putin, “Look, you’re getting played by the Americans here. We have got to respond very forcefully, because if we don’t, the Americans are going to conclude that we’re a paper tiger, that we are not, in fact, going to back up our doctrine, that they can just continue to push us, and then we’re going to be in a real problem down the road. We have got to draw a hard line.”
Now, will they do that or not? Right now, I don’t know. Am I confident that some Russians are going to be telling Putin exactly that? Yeah, I am. I’d be very surprised if they were not.
FP: Do you think Russia is very likely to escalate in its response to Ukraine’s attack?
GB: I wouldn’t say very likely, but this is a very difficult issue for them. The Ukrainians are crossing a red line with Russia’s nuclear force that the Russians have clearly drawn. The Ukrainians knew they [the Russians] drew it, and now they [the Ukrainians have] have done it.
And the question is, what do the Russians do to respond to this? Do they do nothing? My guess is that what they do is going to be conditioned heavily by how the Trump administration handles this.
Does Trump reach out to Putin, talk seriously about what happened, make it clear to Putin that this was not something that we were involved in or supported and not something that we want to see happen again, and reassure the Russians that we are indeed sincerely interested in a genuine compromise settlement of this war that brings it to a stable conclusion?
Right now, there are a lot of doubts in Russia [about] whether, in fact, that’s what we want. Unless Putin has a strong assurance from Trump that this attack is something that the United States opposes, then the Russians are going to be more likely to respond quite forcefully.
FP: Unless I’m misinterpreting you, it sounds like you’re saying that an operation of this scope and scale by Ukraine increases the risk of a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia?
GB: Yes, there is no question that it increases the likelihood of a direct confrontation, unless the Trump administration takes active steps to defuse this, which it can do. I hope it does.
FP: Do you think Ukraine was trying to force the United States’ hand with this operation, even more so than Russia’s?
GB: I don’t think there’s any question that the Ukrainians are trying to put us in a situation where we are forced to get even tougher with the Russians than Trump would like to. In fact, after this operation, Zelensky made a public statement saying that it is urgently important that the U.S. toughen sanctions on Russia—that’s the only way that Russia will “come to the negotiating table.” So, I think the [Ukrainians’] target audience for this operation was here in Washington, not in Russia.
FP: That said, how embarrassing was this for Putin, and what does it expose about Russia’s vulnerabilities?
GB: It is embarrassing for Putin. Clearly, there were security lapses on the Russian side that allowed this to happen. Border security, for example. The Ukrainians brought these drones deep into Russian territory by sending them across the Russian border. Russian border inspectors failed to catch this, and that is an embarrassing lapse.
This does put pressure on Putin to respond in some way, and there will be a lot of his advisors that say, “We can’t afford not to respond, because if we don’t, this will just cement this impression that Ukraine and its allies in the West can just continue to push across all Russian red lines, and now they’ve crossed our nuclear security red line, which was clearly articulated in the revised nuclear-use doctrine. So, we can’t afford to simply ignore this.” That’s what they will argue.
Now, Putin is the ultimate decision-maker, and whether he agrees with that or not, we will have to see. But it’s very much in America’s interest to defuse this situation, because this is one that could escalate.
It would not necessarily escalate immediately into a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia. But it’s not hard to imagine a set of circumstances where Putin takes quite forceful action against Ukraine. And one example might be the use of these Oreshnik advanced missiles, which have maneuvering warheads with the ability to strike deep underground facilities in Ukraine, to go after Ukraine’s command and control capabilities, which I believe are located in hardened, deep underground structures, but may well be vulnerable to Russian strikes.
Now, if Russia were to do that and were to create the kind of destruction in and around Kyiv that it’s capable of conducting, would the United States simply step back and say, “Not our problem”? Would Trump be able politically to say, “Oh, well, not our battle, not my war. This is between Russia and Ukraine”?
I think he would be under tremendous political pressure to do something in response. And that is a dangerous situation. No question.
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