Extraordinary new video footage gives an up-close view of Ukraine’s ‘Spider Web’ strikes on Putin’s nuclear bombers.
Ukraine blew up scores of Russian nuclear-capable fighter planes in a mass drone attack on Sunday, targeting airfields thousands of miles away from the frontline.
At least 40 fighter jets were hit by drones which were smuggled into Russia and then launched remotely off the back of trucks.
Some of the planes damaged included were the A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22, Tu-160, as well as An-12 and Il-78, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU.
Donald Trump said today he had a phone call with Putin in which the Russian President said Russia ‘will have to respond to the recent attack’.
In a post on social media, the US president said that Putin told him – ‘very strongly’ – that he ‘will have to respond to recent attacks on the airfields.’
Some commentators called it ‘Russia’s Pearl Harbour’ and their ‘blackest day in aviation’.
In total Ukraine says 41 aircraft were damaged or destroyed with damage valued at up to £5 billion.
This new video footage was shown as Putin held a video conference with other senior officials – the first time he had been seen publicly since Sunday.
Other video at the time showed scores of strategic and nuclear bombers being hit at Olenya air base, in the Arctic, and Belaya base in Siberia.
These airbases were home to vital military jets, which were relocated further north and east out of the strike zone of Ukraine’s drones.
Strikes also blasted Diaghilev airbase in Ryazan Oblast, and Ivanovo airbase in Ivanovo Oblast.
The planes hit by Ukraine are expensive and vital parts of Russia’s arsenal, with A-50 jets costing as much as £260million each.
It emerged that a former clothes merchant who worked as a DJ on the side was the mastermind behind it all.
Artem Tymofieiev, 37, is now the focus of a nationwide manhunt for orchestrating the attack involving a truck convoy carrying drones.
Ukraine launched a new attack on a bridge in Crimea days after their ‘Pearl Harbour’ ambush on Russia.
The SBU confirmed it blasted the underwater pillars of the Crimean Bridge on Monday night after a months-long operation.
A detonation erupting underneath the bridge after 1,100kg worth of explosive devices had been covertly planted by SBU agents.
The bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge, is a personal project of Putin which links the peninsula, invaded by Russia in 2014, to the mainland.
It came after civilian homes and buildings across Ukraine were hit in a wave of missile strikes.
At least three people were killed and two wounded in shelling on the Kramatorsk district of the Donetsk region.
One person was killed and another injured in the Kharkiv region as Putin’s forces struck civilian areas, damaging a postal terminal and warehouse.
Four people were injured as fires blazed in Odesa, including at a warehouse filled with food products.
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