 "The reason Ukraine chose June 1 for Spider Web drone attack on Russia")
On June 1, Ukraine launched a massive drone strike against Russian airbases storing nuclear-capable long-range bombers.
The operation, nicknamed “Spider Web,” featured over 100 unmanned aerial vehicles and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) coordinated the attack after more than 18 months of meticulous preparation and coordination.
The timing of the strike was deeply symbolic. The drones were activated precisely 29 years after June 1, 1996, the date when Ukraine officially completed the transfer of its last nuclear warheads to Russia, thereby becoming a non-nuclear weapons state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This followed the signing of the Budapest Memorandum on December 5, 1994, in which Ukraine agreed to relinquish the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal inherited after the Soviet Union’s collapse. In exchange, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation provided security assurances, pledging to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from the use or threat of force against its political independence.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine acquired the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. Although the warheads were manufactured in Russia, Ukraine’s control over them gave it significant strategic leverage, until they were surrendered under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum.
The execution of Operation Spider Web reflected a high degree of technical sophistication. According to military sources, first-person view (FPV) drones were smuggled into Russia, concealed within mobile wooden structures mounted on trucks. At the designated moment, the roofs of these mobile units were remotely opened, allowing the drones to launch and strike intended targets.
The scope of Operation Spider Web was evident almost immediately after it started, since reports of explosions were received in many time zones throughout Russia, ranging from the Amur area, more than 8,000 kilometres from Ukraine, to Murmansk, located above the Arctic Circle in the extreme north.
Impact Shorts
View AllUkraine chose June 1 for this coordinated attack in an effort to emphasise the repercussions of breaching international agreements in addition to causing harm to vital military installations. The operation was a clear reminder of the Budapest Memorandum signatories’ eventual broken commitments, especially in light of Russia’s continued aggressiveness.
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