The unprecedented attack on Russian military airfields by Ukrainian drones on June 1 is not only significant because it destroyed several strategic aviation aircraft. Operation Spiderweb also showed the world just how vulnerable Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are.
At the same time, it demonstrated that within a local conventional conflict, such attacks will not provoke a nuclear response from Moscow. The Russian nuclear doctrine was and remains aimed at the United States, and its goal is to prevent the threat of a global war.
The exact losses sustained by the Russian Aerospace Forces as a result of the Ukrainian drone attack have yet to be established, but they include at least seven Tu-95MS heavy strategic bombers, which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Several Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and at least one A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft were also destroyed. According to the Financial Times, the drones destroyed or damaged about 20 percent of Russia’s operationally ready long-range aviation.
Russia currently produces one strategic bomber per year, so it will take at least seven years to make up for the losses. The Tu-95MSs and Tu-22M3s were designed back in the Soviet era and are no longer in production, so as a carrier of cruise missiles, their destruction is a major blow to Russian long-range aviation. The loss of the A-50, meanwhile, will reduce the effectiveness of fighter and strike aircraft.
Operation Spiderweb was also a serious blow to Russia’s image. Strategic bombers, which only the United States, Russia, and China have in service, are a symbol of power and an important instrument for projecting force. It’s no coincidence that Russia resumed flights by strategic bombers back in 2007 in various regions of the world, including over neutral waters close to NATO countries.
Most importantly of all, the operation was an attack on one of the official elements of the nuclear triad: strategic aviation, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear submarines. Nuclear weapons are the main symbol of Russia’s global greatness. Accordingly, Operation Spiderweb was undoubtedly a blow to the Kremlin’s pride.
At the same time, the actual impact of the attack on the Russian nuclear triad should not be exaggerated. According to various estimates, at the beginning of 2025, Russia had between forty-seven and fifty-eight Tu-95MS and thirteen to fifteen Tu-160 aircraft. According to the New START treaty (which is valid through February 2026, though Russia suspended its participation in it in 2023), strategic aviation accounts for just 12–13 percent of Russia’s total number of nuclear weapons carriers. The loss of several Tu-95MSs, therefore, is not critical in terms of Russia’s readiness to carry out a retaliatory nuclear strike.
Until the 1960s, strategic bombers were the only means of transporting nuclear weapons to enemy territory. But after the Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, the aviation component of the triad ceased to play a leading role. After the introduction of a moratorium on aerial nuclear tests in 1963, strategic bombers stopped having anything to do with nuclear missiles at all, with the exception of a short period from January 1985 to April 1987, when long-range aviation aircraft with weapons on board patrolled the Arctic.
Later, the Russian military watched as the United States used strategic bombers in Iraq and elsewhere as delivery vehicles for long-range precision cruise missiles. Having developed the Kh-101 and Kh-555 missiles, Russia began using strategic bombers the same way, first in Syria, and then in Ukraine.
As a result, strategic aviation has de facto become a means of conventional warfare. That means that in practice, an attack on it no longer carries the risk of a retaliatory nuclear strike. The Tu-95MS and Tu-160 proved to be entirely legitimate—and realistic—targets for Kyiv.
The vulnerability of strategic aviation on the ground has long been known. Such aircraft are only resistant to attack when they are in the air. At the same time, constant patrolling would require significant resources, and continuous operations would inevitably mean a loss of combat capability at both the technical and personnel levels.
Another option is to have some aircraft on high alert for immediate takeoff. But that requires an effective early warning system for a missile attack, as well as a reliable chain of command transmission. In Russia’s case, that is virtually impossible due to the limited satellite constellation and lack of radars outside the country’s territory.
The architects of Operation Spiderweb were helped by the close proximity in which the strategic bombers were kept to one another. For many years, they were based at two key airfields: Engels-2 in the Saratov region, and Ukrainka in the Amur region. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the former has been repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian drones: in 2022, they damaged at least two Tu-95MSs, and in March 2025, a strike hit a warehouse containing Kh-555 and Kh-101 cruise missiles. After that, the long-range aviation command decided to redistribute the bombers to other airfields.
Russia is home to about one hundred military airfields, but only about a quarter of them have a runway at least 3,000 meters long, which is a mandatory requirement for the Tu-95MS and Tu-160. Ultimately, only four airfields in the country were suitable for housing the aircraft on a permanent basis. So some of the aircraft were left in their original location, and some were moved to the Belaya airfield in the Irkutsk region and Olenya airfield in the Murmansk region. It was these airfields that were attacked by drones on June 1.
The operation’s success was also facilitated by the fact that the aircraft were out in the open air. Back in 2022, after the attacks on Engels-2, the Russian military leadership began talking about the need to build shelters for military aircraft. The New START treaty allows strategic aircraft to be kept in hangars to protect against atmospheric phenomena—provided that such shelters do not hinder the monitoring of compliance with restrictions on the number of aircraft. However, no shelters have yet been built.
The main reason for this is strategic inertia. Russian military planning continued to be based on the outdated assumption that an attack on the aviation part of the nuclear triad was unlikely, since such an attack could supposedly provoke a nuclear response. Secondly, the military has dragged its feet over the hangars, since they reduce operational flexibility, which is important when every second counts.
Thirdly, hangars would decrease the aircraft’s mobility even further, as they could only be based at airfields with hangars. Fourthly, the bureaucratic nature of the Russian military-industrial complex means that even when a political decision has been made, the system is not capable of promptly starting the development and serial production of a required item.
As a result, it was only in July 2024 that Defense Minister Andrei Belousov publicly pledged to begin building shelters for strategic bombers. A few days before the massive attack on Russian airfields, he was shown a model of a shelter for the Tu-160 for the first time. That model was for a fabric semi-open hangar that would not in any case have offered any protection from the drones.
There’s no guarantee that substantial shelters will be built even now, following the attack. That means that similar operations may follow, including ones targeting strategic submarines docked with the Northern and Pacific fleets, and missile systems, the coordinates of which are also known.
The need to ramp up the security of the triad elements will require the Russian authorities to thoroughly reconsider many of their approaches. And there is no guarantee that subsequent changes will comply with the principles of control and verification outlined in the New START. Moreover, Russia may decide that it has lost part of its nuclear potential, and start restoring that potential unmonitored—and not just by focusing on aviation.
Under the terms of the New START, each party has the right to independently determine the composition and structure of its strategic offensive weapons. In other words, Russia could compensate for “nuclear losses” to its aviation by strengthening other elements of the triad. At a time when control mechanisms are not functioning, there is a risk of strategic uncertainty emerging over the development trajectory of Russia’s nuclear forces. The United States already believed that Moscow was not complying with the restrictions on the number of deployed nuclear warheads established by the New START. Now there are even more grounds for such concerns.
The recent attack doesn’t just raise questions for Russia, but for other nuclear powers too. The Ukrainian operation showed that it is possible to carry out an effective surprise attack on dozens of aircraft without using cruise or ballistic missiles.
What should the response be to the loss of several nuclear weapons carriers? Where is the red line that will trigger an inevitable nuclear response? And how can the organizer of such an attack be identified if no one claims responsibility? Answers will now have to be found to all of these questions, and included in future arms control agreements—if, of course, there ever are any.
