Will Zelensky pay for it? Trump kept in the dark as Ukrainian drone attack destroys over 40 Russian bombers
Synopsis Ukraine secretly planned and launched a big drone attack inside Russia, destroying many warplanes. Reports say President Zelensky led the plan. Trump, now U.S. President again, was not told about it. Ukraine launched a massive drone attack deep inside Russia on Sunday, destroying over 40 Russian military planes, including strategic bombers. The drones also targeted five Russian air bases. The whole operation took more than 1.5 years to plan and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a report by CBS News.
ADVERTISEMENT The attack was carried out by Ukraine's security service using drones launched from trucks parked secretly near the Russian air bases. Some of those trucks were even parked in Siberia, which is thousands of miles from Ukraine. Ukraine did not tell the Trump administration about the plan before the attack, as per Axios report.
Even though Trump is the U.S. President again, he was kept in the dark about this major strike. After the attack, Zelensky said he would send a Ukrainian team led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to Istanbul for ceasefire talks with Russia. During his second term, Trump has been trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which has now gone on for three years.
Trump used to be friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but recently called him 'absolutely CRAZY' and said he's 'needlessly killing a lot of people' in Ukraine. The drone attack happened around the same time as two bridge collapses in different parts of Russia, which killed 7 people and injured 69, according to news reports. Russia's Railways first blamed the bridge collapse in Bryansk on 'illegal interference', likely pointing at Ukrainian saboteurs. But they later deleted that message from Telegram, as per reports. Q1. Why didn't Ukraine tell Trump about the attack?
Reports say Ukraine chose not to inform the Trump team in advance.
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Q2. What was hit in the Ukraine drone strike?
Over 40 Russian military bombers and five air bases were hit.
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The truck drivers said to Russian authorities that they weren't told about the contents of the containers and were instructed to stop at gas stations or roadside rest stops near the airports, according to Russian media. Once parked at their designated locations, the roofs of the containers housing the quadcopters were opened remotely, the SBU said, and the drones flew out with a high-pitched buzz. A photo shows Maliuk as he surveyed diagrams of planes where the most vulnerable spots are marked with red crosses. Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the crosses mark where internal fuel tanks are located on each type of plane, which would have caused a major fire when ignited by the small payload from the drones. Celebrating the attack, Zelensky lauded the SBU—and personally thanked Maliuk—for the operation, which he said showed Ukraine is still in the fight. 'Russia's whole narrative, which they spread everywhere, in Europe, in Britain, in America, that they're safe, they're winning the war—this narrative is not working,' Zelensky told reporters Monday. 'They're not safe.' Write to James Marson at and Brenna T. Smith at Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
