Ukraine’s June 1 drone strikes against five bases across Russia underscored its ingenuity and may help shape the negotiations to come.
www.atlanticcouncil.org
KYIV—It was a surprising and devastating attack that some hysterical Russian war bloggers are calling the country’s Pearl Harbor. But the assault on Pearl Harbor occurred when there was no war between Japan and the United States.
Having spent the last four nights in a bomb shelter in Odesa and Kyiv as the Kremlin continues its massive missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s cities, in a war of aggression that Moscow launched, I can assure you that Ukraine had every right to do what it did on June 1: Strike strategic bombers at five bases across the breadth of Russia.
In contrast to Moscow’s targeting of Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure, Ukraine committed no war crime or breach of international law in destroying those Russian planes, which are regularly used against civilians.
Rather than recalling the Pearl Harbor attack, the complexity and boldness of Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb”—which involved smuggling drones into Russian regions from Murmansk to Irkutsk, and launching them against advanced Russian Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers and A-50 intelligence planes—rivals the now legendary Israeli intelligence operation against
Hezbollah fighters’ pagers last year. It has underscored once again that ingenuity along with determination are Ukraine’s strategic advantages in stopping Moscow’s war of aggression.….
…..Beyond the battlefield, the impact of this operation is perhaps even more significant. It is a strong counter to the dubious “common wisdom” that the war is moving inevitably in Moscow’s favor. This same assumption explains why Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected numerous proposals for a cease-fire by US President Donald Trump, and why he has refused to send a paper with the Kremlin’s terms for a cease-fire to Ukraine before the June 2 peace talks in Istanbul that he proposed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy correctly described that proposal as a stalling tactic, but against the backdrop of this daring operation
finally announced that Ukraine would attend the talks. At this point, Moscow is not talking about boycotting them…..
…..A key question is how the Trump administration will respond to this operation. Several hours after the news broke, the
only word from the White House was that Kyiv did not let it know of the operation in advance. The attack occurred just days after the visit of Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal to Ukraine, where they
announced that the Senate will move ahead this coming week on their long-awaited bill to impose major additional sanctions against Russia.
Trump has been coming under increasing criticism for his reluctance to put real pressure on Putin for the Russian president’s failure to accept cease-fire terms proposed by Washington and accepted by Kyiv. Will Trump let the sanctions bill—which has eighty-two co-sponsors—pass the Senate? He could call Putin, point to Ukraine’s latest military accomplishment as one more reason to accept Trump’s compromise solution for a cease-fire, and note that political pressure in Washington to take more action against Russia is growing. (The US president can also point to Ukraine’s effective operation, which flummoxed Russian air defenses, as one more reason the United States needs his proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, which Ukraine could be a uniquely capable partner in building.)
Trump could convey the message that if Putin cannot bring himself to accept a cease-fire, significant new sanctions are coming. That would be a clever way to leverage Ukraine’s battlefield success to achieve Trump’s own goal: a durable peace in Ukraine.