Russian Airfields Are Burning

Today is June 1st, 2025, and Russia is burning. Not the entire country, but a few key strategic airfields. After Ukraine smuggled in short-range drones in some hidden compartments and cargo trucks, launched them, and appear to have destroyed or significantly degraded one key leg of the Russian nuclear triad.

Now, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves because this operation—we're still learning the effects of this operation—but it is starting to look like this might be the most daring and most effective military operation that we've seen in a long time.

So, what we know right now, again, the details are still coming out, is that Ukraine effectively targeted and struck four strategic Russian airfields in the eastern portion, or the central and eastern portion, of the country. I'm going to butcher the names here: Ballaya, Yagalvo, Olenia, and Nvanovo. There's also a rumor that a submarine base was hit. That, at this point, is not confirmed. There was some footage that was shared from a different location attributed to the sub base. The four airfields are confirmed. Those airfields are home to some of Russia's strategic airlift capability and strategic bomber capability. TU95s—IL TU95s are strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons. IL76 are strategic airlift aircraft. And then A50—A50s are like their Awax early warning platforms. That is where a lot of these are housed. And based off the footage that we're seeing, at least a couple of those have been destroyed.

Now, the reason that we haven't really heard the names of those airfields before—there's a lot of others much closer to Ukraine that are getting hit on a pretty regular basis, all things considered. But these airfields that were just hit earlier today are a long ways away from Ukraine. Blaya, for instance, 4,500 km from Harkke. That's greater than the distance from New York to California. Ukraine just simply does not have any munitions that go that far. Um, the—the West has not—you talk about ATACMS or Storm Shadows or Taurus missiles. None of those are traveling 4,500 km.

All right. So, the way that this played out is actually pretty interesting. We've got a few more details that have started to come out. Now, in terms of the impact here, we should note that we don't know how many aircraft have been destroyed and/or damaged. We probably won't ever know that. We'll get some clear footage released by Ukraine, no doubt, because we already have some. Russia—it's not in their interest to share exactly how many of these aircraft have been taken out because we have a general idea of how many they have in operation. And again, when you're talking about TU95 bombers, that's one leg of Russia's nuclear triad. We've got the submarine-launched nuclear missiles. We've got the ground-based nuclear missiles, and then you've got the air-launched nuclear capabilities. If one of those takes a 10, 15, 60% hit, whatever it is, that's a significant uh degradation to the overall threat that Russia poses. So, they're not going to share it.

Now, turning to what this operation may have looked like, we've got some really interesting footage and pictures here. According to Jimmy Rushen, he says, "Details and images of the preparation of today's uh SBU operation have been revealed by Ehore Lachinov. The special operation, cenamed Spiderweb, was a result—as a result—the SBU hit 41 Russian strategic aviation aircraft." That's very specific. We've heard Russian sources so far throw out numbers around 40. 41 makes me think that they were actually counting these as they struck home. So, let's keep that number back in mind. He says they were prepared for this operation—took more than a year and a half to prepare. According to our sources, the operation was extremely complex from a logistical point of view. The SBU first transported FPV drones to Russia and later uh mobile wooden containers. And you'll see some of these here. They say were hidden under the roofs of the containers in these—uh, you see the pictures here. The FPV stack looks like false ceilings, if you will. Um, let's see. At the right moment, the roofs of the containers were remotely opened, and the drones flew to strike the Russian bombers. We have unique photos here showing exactly how drones were prepared to attack military airfields. Sources in the SPU—this is important—emphasize that the people who took part in this historic special operation have been in Ukraine for a long time. So, if the Putin regime uh detains someone, it'll be another staged event for the domestic audience.

We actually got some footage as well. This stuff seems like straight out of Hollywood. So, I'm a little hesitant right out the gate to share this, but it's circulating enough on both Russian and Ukrainian channels now that I feel like there's at least something to this. But what we see in this—this video—shows one of these trucks apparently parked outside of one of the Russian airfields. And you can see the drones flying out the back just one after the other. And these are short-range drones. There's rumors right now that these may have been wire-guided or fiber optic drones. Remember, we've seen those able to strike targets out to 20 km or further. So, you park this truck just on the outskirts of an airfield; it's going to have no issue hitting the bombers there. It is possible that these were uh fiber optic from the vehicle. And the reason I say that is uh any sort of electronic warfare jamming directly over the airfield is probably to be expected. So, it wouldn't be shocking if you'd want to go into that attack—that—that attack pattern with some sort of uh capability to not have the—the drones knocked out with EW. We also have some video showing these vehicles supposedly self-destructed. Again, straight out of Hollywood, right? Self-destructed after these—these drones took off and—and effectively struck their targets. Again, still details coming out of this, but this is a key component. If these regular-looking cargo trucks were launching short-range drones destroying Russian bombers, Russia's probably going to be a little bit concerned about if there's any more of those floating around the country.

Now, an important aspect here is going to be getting into the Russian reaction. We're actually hearing a lot more from Russia right now than we are from Ukraine. But real quick, wanted to pitch the fundraiser we have going on right now. This is to pick up unmanned ground vehicles, recon drones, and power generation for two Ukrainian units, the Third Assault Brigade and the 13th Artia Brigade. We actually got a couple interviews coming up with—with guys of these units—to talk about how they're using some of this technology. But the UGVs are used to deliver logistics to the zero line and then evacuate casualties off the front. Uh, we're doing this through Ukraine Aid Operations, which is a registered 501c3 nonprofit. So, tax-deductible donations. Solid organization, very transparent. They've been doing this for a couple years now. If able and interested, the link to donate is in the description below. We're over 30,000 uh raised of the 50,000 goal. So hopefully wrap this one up before too long. But there you go.

Now moving on to the Russian responses here, which are pretty interesting. Uh, Rybar, Russian media says, quote, "At the moment there's a large-scale attack on Russian strategic aviation airfields in the Merman and Kutsk regions, which have already resulted in the loss of several Tu95 bombers. The attack was carried out using FPV drones, first-person view drones, which were launched from trucks that arrived at the facilities. Control was carried out through installed repeaters via satellite communication. As we've said before, TU95 and TU22 strategic aviation aircraft have long been discontinued, and there is nothing to do to restore them. Accordingly, these losses cannot be restored. This is without exaggeration a very serious blow to the strategic component caused by both serious miscalculations in the work of the special services and a careless attitude toward aviation management, which even after all of the attack stood in the open field without shelters. Let's recall the old question: Is building a shelter more expensive than a new aircraft that has been discontinued? The sad answer can be found now."

Now I should note that we've got American military aircraft sitting outside of shelters in some—for deployed locations—down in Diego Garcia. We've got some of our most advanced aircraft right now, and there's a lot of people in the space pointing to that going, "Hey guys, pay attention. Do you see what's happening right now in Russia? We have to build more shelters for our aircraft." Um, and that's the issue that a lot of these Russian aircraft ran into here. You know, some of these shelters—very limited construction overhead—can do quite a bit to prevent or minimize the damage from some of these FPV drones. If nothing else, it makes them that much harder to hit. But just sitting out on the tarmac like this, like we saw earlier today. I mean, easy pickings right now. What you're seeing laid across those vehicles isn't really protection. It's tires and things that are designed to kind of obstruct—my understanding—I'm not really sure if this plays out. Almost sounds like an old wives' tale at this point. It's designed to obstruct AI and kind of uh automated learning from being able to detect those images and say, "Yes, that is a TU22 um or that is a TU95. Should go after that kind of bomber that's in the target bank." I guess the tires like throw it off or something. Maybe a couple years ago. I'm not convinced that really works anymore. Nonetheless, those aren't there for protection, per se. And you can see they're not really doing anything to protect the aircraft.

Fighter Bomber is having quite the day. So, this is a Russian mil blogger over there that focuses on aviation, and he is not doing great. He said, "Today will later be called a black day for Russian long-range aviation, and the day is not yet over." Two Majors, another Russian mil blogger here, said—talking about the response—and this is something we need to get into. He says, "This is not just a pretext. This is a reason to launch nuclear strikes on Ukraine. This is a direct undermining of the nuclear strategic balance of power and a reduction in nuclear security of our country. And Kee is counting on an asymmetric response of a non-nuclear nature. We've been responding asymmetrically for four years now. The enemy has long studied us," and we are starting to see a lot of commentary from very pro-Russian nationalistic accounts talking about, "Hey, we need to go, you know, over the top here in the response. This cannot be a, you know, let's launch another 100 or 150 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities even." They want something big. They want something that their population can celebrate. I don't expect that it would lead to any sort of actual nuclear attack. But the reason that Two Majors is even getting into that direction is what we mentioned at the beginning of this video. This is one leg of the Russian nuclear triad. So you're talking about an aspect of their nuclear deterrence that, if nothing else, has been degraded a little bit. And when you look at Russian nuclear doctrine, that is one of the aspects they talk about that would justify a retaliatory nuclear strike in their eyes. And from a big picture, you have to think about that with a, you know, say the United States and Russia were at war. If the United States did not launch a nuclear attack, but if the US or NATO went after and knocked out the entire Russian air force and they were no longer capable of firing air-launched nuclear weapons, that's a hit to Russia's ability to defend themselves. They might view that as the necessary response being a nuclear strike. We don't tend to see that when it's a non-nuclear state attacking a nuclear state, but this is Russia, and they tend to go that direction pretty quickly.

So, nonetheless, we do need to keep an eye out for a Russian response here in the coming days. I don't know if I would expect it tonight. Um, but we know that Putin and the security uh cabinet council there is already holding an emergency meeting based off of this. We probably are going to see some sort of long-range strike response in the very near future.

Additionally, a couple items to keep an eye on as more information comes out here. And for what it's worth, I figure this is probably going to be the first of a couple different videos I'll be putting out today or at least over the next couple days as we get more information. Uh, let's keep an eye out for people rounded up inside of Russia. Again, Ukraine made clear that this was all done remotely. Now, maybe they hired some drivers that didn't know the cargo they had or something like that, but Ukraine is making clear that, "Hey, if you catch somebody and say that they were involved with this, they're not. They have no idea what's going on." And we'll—we'll see. I would expect that Russia is probably going to round some people up in the near term and say they were involved in some way, shape, or form.

On top of that, there were a couple different rail lines last night, bridges that collapsed in western Russia—one in Bianc, one in uh Kursk. Right out the gate, the reports from Russia were, "Hey, it just looks like these bridges were getting old and the infrastructure was—was neglected." But then when the second one happened around 3:00 a.m. local time, all of a sudden it turned over to, "This looks like sabotage. It looks like Ukraine is intentionally dropping some of these rail bridges uh in the western portion of the country." And sabotage is being thrown around a lot. And I wonder if they're going to try to tie that to this given how quickly both of those two events played out. But anyways, the—the last big item here, and you have to think about the psychological impact inside of Russia. These things were launched from inside of uh vehicles, inside of trucks that just look pretty normal driving all over Russia. They have to wonder how many other of those trucks are currently in the country right now. How many are parked ready to launch? And if they have anything that could effectively defeat this, like if one of these showed up outside of another Russian military base as I'm recording, can they do anything to shoot those drones down or are they just, you know, out of luck at this point?

So, nonetheless, again, from what we've seen so far, it does look an awful lot like this is probably the most significant, most daring military operation carried out by anybody in a long, long time. You're talking about small, cheap, inexpensive drones being used to destroy one leg of a nuclear power's nuclear triad. That's insane. Strategic bombers being destroyed by radio-controlled drones one after the other after the other. We just—it's hard to come up with a comparison for that. But nonetheless, again, we'll uh continue to gather more information and try to keep you updated as best we can. That's all I got for now. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all next time.