Ukraine’s attack on Russian airbases, a masterpiece of underdog warfare

The Ukrainian attack on 41 Russian long-range bombers and intelligence aircraft on June 1 has been widely recognised as a triumph of scientific ingenuity and a tactical military masterpiece of underdog warfare. Some have likened it to Pearl Harbor, but that underestimates the technological achievement and sullies the moral accomplishment, as Japan violated existing peaceful conditions without notice and began its attack before the Japanese ambassador arrived at the office of the US Secretary of State to advise him that further negotiation seemed not to be useful. While Japan was an underdog opposite the United States, it was one of the world’s great powers and at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor had a slightly larger aircraft carrier force than the United States. Beyond that it was a conventional attack, though very skilfully executed, but the only technical innovation had been to enable torpedo-carrying aircraft to drop their torpedoes in the shallow waters of a battleship anchorage without them striking the harbour bottom and detonating. In this, the Japanese learned something from the British attack on the Italian Navy at Taranto a year before.

The Ukrainian attack was on Russian airbases from Murmansk within the Arctic Circle to the Amur area three time zones away and much closer to China than to Ukraine. Drones were stocked with relatively heavy bombs and concealed in a vacant space beneath the roof of wooden cabins that were imported into Russia on the backs of trucks and driven to designated locations by drivers who had absolutely no knowledge of the real nature of their cargoes or the purpose of their journeys, and they were parked at carefully pre-designated locations. On distant signals, roofs of these wooden cabins suddenly opened and the drones flew out and proceeded at once to their nearby targets. Some of the drivers, astounded and disconcerted, tried to down or misdirect the drones by throwing rocks at them, without success. One of the launch sites was immediately adjacent to a Russian secret police station responsible for maintenance of security at the nearby airbase. The only Ukrainian personnel in Russia aware of and participating in these attacks had already been withdrawn and the local Russian drivers were unwitting and blameless.

While the missions caused very few personnel casualties, and Ukraine itself suffered no casualties whatever, at least 13 heavy bombers were a total loss and approximately 28 others were severely damaged. The several valuable intelligence planes damaged or destroyed were very sophisticated and the Russian Air Force has only about six other such aircraft. All of these aircraft had been engaged in missions against Ukraine and some of them carried and fired up to eight cruise missiles which were routinely targeted at civilian areas of Ukraine. None of the aircraft damaged or destroyed are currently in production so even those which it is possible to repair will be out of action for a prolonged period.

This is yet another resounding slap in the face for Vladimir Putin’s aggression, and it is the kind of enterprising, innovative military counter-strike that captures the imagination of observers and ingratiates an underdog enemy to the onlooking world. It is a little like the exploding pagers with which Israel did great damage to the higher ranks of Hezbollah last year: an unsuspected innovation very precisely targeted and causing practically no collateral damage. Russian President Vladimir Putin undertook the Ukraine war more than three years ago, confident that he would occupy the Ukrainian capital of Kiev within a few days and the entire country in less than a month and reabsorb it into Russia where Ukraine had generally resided since the times of Ivan the Terrible in the 16^th century. This incident follows a number of other serious humiliations of the Russian army and of the Kremlin’s military aptitudes, including the defection of the Wagner mercenaries who marched almost halfway to Moscow, cheered every meter of their route by the Russian people, and the defection of more than 50,000 deserters from the Russian army. It is almost inconceivable that the official continuator of Stalin’s Red Army that conquered Berlin in May 1945 is being bolstered by mercenaries from North Korea and missiles from Iran, both ostensibly insignificant military powers in comparison with Russia.

Putin’s ambition to be the redeemer of the former status of Russia as a great power in Eastern and Central Europe is understandable but Russophiles should be in no doubt about the proportions of the public relations disaster and riddled prestige that the blunderbuss Russian military effort has caused that country. Not since the Finns, in Mr. Churchill’s phrase, ”showed the world what free men can do,” in 1940 and 1941 has Russia suffered such military embarrassment. And even Stalin was able to send Zhukov to bring that war to a swift and satisfactory end. President Trump and NATO generally have done their best to enable Russia to end this war without excessive embarrassment, especially considering the arrogant and overconfident bellicosity with which it unleashed the war. Trump has made it clear that the Western Alliance must not be revealed as a paper tiger and cannot accept the substantial reversal of its almost bloodless victory in the Cold War, which the reconquest of Ukraine by Russia would constitute. But he has also shown that he wishes to normalise relations with Russia and restore a civilised and even cooperative understanding between Russia and the West.

If Putin does not soon grasp this olive branch, which is proffered out of appreciation of geopolitical realities and not as a recognition of his own barbarous and badly mistaken contact, he will leave the United States and the West with no choice but to give Ukraine weapons capable of making continuation of the war more painful than Russia can endure. Putin should be in no more doubt on the West’s ability to do that than the palsied Iranian leadership should question that its nuclear military capacity will be blown to pieces if it does not reciprocate and consummate in good faith the lengthening negotiations on that subject.