It was daring but sneaky, complicated yet simple in principle, and deadly but inexpensive, that probably sums up Ukraine's drone attack on Russia.
It happened yesterday. You've seen nothing like it before. Drones flying out of parked trucks, Russian bombers engulfed in flames, and even bases in far of Siberia damaged.
How did Ukraine pull this off? What losses did Russia suffer? let's break it down for you, starting with the attack.
Ukrainian president Zelensky has said that it took 18 months to plan, 18 months of planning. The first step was picking the targets. And Ukraine chose to be very ambitious here. They wanted to hit Russia's bomber fleet.
That's the tu-95 and the tu-20 tools. This is the bomber fleet, as the name suggests. These planes are used to drop bombs, both conventional and nuclear.
And Ukraine decided to strike these Russian planes. One is the Belaya base in Siberia. It is some 4500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Another is the olenia base. This one is located in Russia's Arctic region, almost 2000 kilometers from Ukraine.
So these are far off targets for Kiev, and this is what they chose to strike, and that was step one, locking the targets.
Step two, attacking them. Now we are talking about targets which are 1000s of kilometers away. As you just saw, Ukraine does not have such long range weapons, so they decided to use drones, not military grade attack drones, but simple FPV drones.
FPV stands for first person view. These are drones with a video remote control so you can operate them from a distance. In fact, Ukraine has published some pictures. These are the drones they used against Russia. The same ones that are used by social media influencers. If you go on Amazon, you could buy one of these drones. Of course, there is a difference.
Kiev made them lethal. They used explosives so that the drones blew up on impact. That was step two, choosing to attack with drones.
Step three, reaching the target. How do you do that? For this, Ukraine smuggled the drones into Russia, then it smuggled special wooden boxes. Once both the drones and the boxes were inside Russia, they were put together. The drones were packed into the boxes. After that, they were loaded onto trucks. And here's something to note, none of this raised any suspicions. That's because it looked like routine activity.
Hundreds of trucks probably criss cross Russia every day, so authorities completely missed the ones that were carrying Ukrainian drones. These trucks drove close to the bases that they were supposed to attack, and then it began. Ukraine used remote controls to open the boxes, and once the boxes open, the drones simply flew out.
It's hard to explain this in words. In total, Ukraine used 117 drones. Each drone had its own pilot sitting 1000s of kilometers away, guiding the weapon using a remote control. And now look at the impact, quite deadly.
From the footage of the drone strikes. You can see the drone hovering over Russian bombers then plunging into them and exploding.
Russia admitted that some of the planes caught fire, but they haven't given numbers. They also said that three other bases had been targeted, although those strikes were thwarted.
Ukraine says it hit at least 40 Russian war planes, and 34% of Russian bombers, that is Ukraine's claim. It says their attack cost Russia up to $7 billion if true, this is a massive setback for Moscow.
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