How Ukraine pulled off ‘Operation Spiderweb’ deep inside Russia
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
On the eve of negotiations in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine, the Ukrainian military struck targets hundreds of miles inside Russian territory. Small drones, smuggled into Russia over many months, carried out the attacks. This show of force – one of the biggest Ukrainian attacks since the war started three years ago – boosted morale within Ukraine. But the path to a ceasefire remains murky.
Host Elahe Izadi speaks with Ukraine bureau chief Siobhan O’Grady about whether these strikes could change the balance of power in the war in Ukraine. Plus, updates from a day of peace talks between the two powers. Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On Sunday, Ukraine launched a giant drone attack deep inside of Russia. |
| 0:08.0 | Here's the sound of a video shared by Russian locals in the Akkutsk region. |
| 0:13.0 | It captures part of the attack. |
| 0:19.0 | The operation was codenamed Spider-Wip. |
| 0:24.8 | It took 18 months to plan, and it was supervised personally by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. |
| 0:31.9 | The Ukrainians smuggled hundreds of drones into Russia. |
| 0:35.6 | Then they deployed the weapons, striking four Russian air bases. |
| 0:39.8 | There were no reported casualties, but the damage to Russia's arsenal was massive. |
| 0:45.2 | The attack was one of Ukraine's biggest and deepest against Russia since the war began three years ago, |
| 0:51.8 | and they did it just a day before planned peace talks. |
| 0:59.9 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. I'm Elahe Izadhi. It's Monday, June 2nd. |
| 1:08.4 | Today, Ukraine Bureau Chief Chivano Grady joins me from Kiev to explain how Ukraine pulled this off and whether this attack could change the balance of power in the war. |
| 1:25.5 | Hi, Shavon, thanks so much for joining me today. |
| 1:28.7 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:29.9 | So let's just start this conversation with how much damage did this attack by Ukraine cause inside of Russia? |
| 1:38.3 | That's something everyone is still trying to figure out. |
| 1:41.1 | So what we know from Ukrainian officials and from President Zelensky is that |
| 1:46.8 | at least 41 aircraft were hit. And now the question is how many were destroyed and how many were |
| 1:53.5 | damaged. So the latest assessments coming out today on Monday are that at least 13 Russian aircraft |
| 2:00.3 | were completely destroyed and that the other |
| 2:02.6 | dozens that were hit were at least damaged. So this is a major blow to Russia's capabilities |
| 2:08.8 | because a lot of these aircrafts, according to Ukraine, were being used to target Ukraine |
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