For more than three years, Russia has used its fleet of bombers to rain hellfire on Ukraine. On June 1, Kyiv responded by going after those bombers. <\/p>\n
The operation, codenamed \u201cSpiderweb,\u201d was 18 months in the making. Dozens of hidden drones emerged from trucks parked in Russia, racing to airfields thousands of miles from Ukraine and destroying at least 12 bombers. <\/p>\n
Although the operation was a huge boost for Ukrainian morale, many in the country braced for Moscow\u2019s retaliation. Their fears sharpened when Russian President Vladimir Putin told his US counterpart Donald Trump on Wednesday that the Kremlin would \u201chave to respond\u201d to the attack. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s initial retaliation began Thursday night, in the form of a massive drone and missile strike on Kyiv and across the country. Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defense described the strikes as a \u201cresponse\u201d to Kyiv\u2019s \u201cterrorist acts.\u201d The attack was punishing, but not qualitatively different to what Ukraine has grown used to over three years of war. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s response so far to Ukraine\u2019s extraordinary operation has raised questions about Putin\u2019s ability to escalate the war and exact the retribution that many of his supporters have clamored for. And it has left Ukrainians wondering if it has already felt the brunt of Russia\u2019s response, or if the worst is yet to come. <\/p>\n
In determining Russia\u2019s retaliation, analysts say, Putin has faced several constraints. One is political: Mounting a large-scale, innovative response to the \u201cSpiderweb\u201d operation would be akin to admitting that Ukraine had inflicted a serious blow against Russia \u2013 an impression the Kremlin has been at pains to avoid, said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington DC. <\/p>\n
In a meeting with government ministers on Wednesday, Putin received a lengthy briefing on recent bridge collapses in Kursk and Bryansk, blamed by Russia on Ukraine. Yet, aside from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov\u2019s reference to recent \u201ccriminal provocations\u201d by Kyiv, there was no mention of the \u201cSpiderweb\u201d operation. <\/p>\n
In Russian state media\u2019s coverage of Putin\u2019s call Wednesday with Trump, little was made of the Russian president\u2019s pledge to \u201crespond\u201d to Ukraine\u2019s attack. Instead, the reports focused on the outcome of recent peace talks in Istanbul. <\/p>\n
Putin has also faced material constraints. Whereas Russia\u2019s near-daily strikes on Ukraine used to involve just dozens of drones, they now routinely use more than 400. A day before Ukraine\u2019s \u201cSpiderweb\u201d operation, on May 31, Russia launched 472 drones at Ukraine \u2013 a record in the three-year war, which was surpassed again during Sunday night\u2019s attacks, which used 479 drones. <\/p>\n
\u201cRussia\u2019s response is constrained by the amount of force they\u2019re constantly using,\u201d said William Alberque, a former NATO arms control official now at the Stimson Center think tank. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow would you know if Russia was actually retaliating? What would be more brutal than them destroying apartment flats or attacking shopping malls? What would escalation look like?\u201d <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s pro-war community of Telegram bloggers was not short of ideas. Some prominent channels said that Kyiv\u2019s strikes on Moscow\u2019s nuclear-capable bombers warranted a nuclear strike on Ukraine. Others called for a strike using the Oreshnik ballistic missile, which was unveiled by Putin last year, and has so far been used only once against Ukraine. <\/p>\n
Although Putin often praises his new missile, it has limited uses, said Mark Galeotti, a leading Russia analyst. <\/p>\n
One target could be Ukraine\u2019s security services, the SBU, which masterminded the \u201cSpiderweb\u201d operation, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut that\u2019s not something you can do quickly,\u201d he cautioned. \u201cIn some ways, Putin has already swept away most of the escalation rungs at his disposal, which means that he doesn\u2019t have the option for clear punishment.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a sign that Moscow\u2019s \u201cretaliation\u201d may be ongoing, Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defense said it had struck a Ukrainian airfield in the western Rivne region on Sunday night \u2013 a week after Ukraine\u2019s attacks on Russian airfields. <\/p>\n
The ministry said the attack was \u201cone of the retaliatory strikes\u201d for Kyiv\u2019s \u201cterrorist attacks\u201d against Russia\u2019s airfields, suggesting there may be more to come. Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine\u2019s air force, said the attack on the airfield was \u201cone of the biggest ever carried out by Russia.\u201d Although air defenses \u201cperformed very well,\u201d he said it was \u201cimpossible to shoot down everything.\u201d <\/p>\n
Although Putin may be constrained in his ability to respond to Ukraine\u2019s spectacular operation with one of Russia\u2019s own, this may not matter on the battlefield, said Galeotti. <\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a political perspective\u2026 it\u2019s the Ukrainians who demonstrate that they are the nimble, imaginative, effective ones, and the Russians are just thuggish brutes who continue to grind along,\u201d he said. \u201cBut from the military perspective, in some ways, that\u2019s fine.\u201d <\/p>\n
While Ukraine may have the initiative in terms of headlines and spectacle, Russia still has the initiative on the battlefield. Russian troops have opened a new front in Ukraine\u2019s northern Sumy region and are now just 12 miles from the main city. And on Sunday, Moscow claimed that its forces had advanced into the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk for the first time, after months of clashes. <\/p>\n
The question is whether \u201cPutin is willing to accept whatever damage happens on the home front, precisely for his slow attrition grind forward,\u201d said Galeotti. <\/p>\n
Alberque, of the Stimson Center, said a lot rests on whether Ukraine has been weaving more \u201cSpiderwebs,\u201d or whether its drone attack was a one-off. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that this operation was a year- and-a-half in the planning \u2013 how many other operations are a year-in right now?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n
Two days after the drone attack, Ukraine\u2019s SBU unveiled another operation \u2013 its third attempt to blow up the bridge connecting Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. The bridge over the Kerch Strait was not significantly damaged, but the attack reinforced the SBU\u2019s commitment to impressing upon Moscow that there are costs to continuing its war. <\/p>\n
If \u201chumiliating\u201d operations like those continue, Putin will come under greater pressure to deliver a response that is different in kind, not just degree, Alberque said. <\/p>\n
\u201cPutin is such a creature of strongman politics,\u201d he added. \u201c(The Kremlin) is going to look for other ways to strike back, to show the Russian people that Putin is a great wartime president who is inflicting horrible damage on his enemy, rather than a victim of these spectacular Ukrainian attacks.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For more than three years, Russia has used its fleet of bombers to rain hellfire on Ukraine. On June 1, Kyiv responded by going after those bombers. The operation, codenamed \u201cSpiderweb,\u201d was 18 months in the making. Dozens of hidden drones emerged from trucks parked in Russia, racing to airfields thousands of miles from Ukraine…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}