An operation by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) has hit “more than 40” Russian bombers at air bases “in the rear of the Russian Federation,” a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent on June 1.
“Enemy strategic bombers are burning en masse in Russia — this is the result of a special operation by the SBU,” the source said.
Video provided by the source shows what appears to be a row of heavy bomber aircraft on fire at an undisclosed location.
And that, ladies and gentlemen (and everyone else), may be entire Russian strategic bomber fleet, one that has been terrorizing Ukrainian cities for years now.
Every time they got their ass kicked - like when Kerch bridge was blown up or Moskva was sunk - you’d be sure to expect a bombing run at night. That was their temper tantrum weapon, and one that simply terrorized our people, Kyiv and outskirts had it really bad last few weeks. And now it may be gone.
According to world directory of modern aircraft, this comprises 33% of Russian bomber fleet of 120: https://www.wdmma.org/russian-air-force.php. Not the entire fleet, but a significant loss for Russia.
Losing 1/3 of your bombers in one attack means you’re going to be a lot more careful with the remaining ones though. They lost a significant chunk of their reactionary forces in one go.
Russia has already been fighting a lot longer than they planned and have taken much heavier losses. The only reason they’re still going at all is Putin’s ego and inability to admit any mistakes.
Oh, yep, SBU just officially announced that same number. My mistake.
one that has been terrorizing Ukrainian cities for years now.
No, that’s not how strategic bombers are used. Not in our time.
These bombers were part of the “dead hand”, an element of those nuclear threats Russian officials sometimes make.
Maybe some missiles were being launched from them from time to time, but I doubt even that.
That was their temper tantrum weapon, and one that simply terrorized our people, Kyiv and outskirts had it really bad last few weeks. And now it may be gone.
You must know better, but I’ve read they are using Geran drone swarms more and more, I suppose those are unaffected by this.
Usually getting a notification that strategic bombers took off from Olenya meant setting an alarm in 3 hours (it’s usually at night too) to go to shelter. They take off, fly to Caspian sea, and each launches a few dozen guided rockets at Ukraine.
There were almost 200 confirmed take offs from Olenya. So basically every week they have been bombing Ukrainian cities with guided rockets.
Stand corrected.
Also quite stupid then, to use them in this quality.
Nothing Russia has done including (or since) the invasion in 2022 was smart. It was all stupid.
Russia’s wasted a million soldiers on grabbing a rather small amount of Ukrainian land. They’ve destroyed their own economy, their trade relationships with most of the world, and their demographic future. Take a million men off the streets of most countries and it’s going to crash your population within a generation or two.
Considering that a specific group of people is doing this, sociopathic and power-hungry, it makes plenty of sense.
In case of Ukraine they gambled, because they wanted another country under their rule too much.
In the air they are highly survivable long range bomb trucks, that all these ones had to be destroyed in drone attacks on the ground is kind of evidence of that.
The US has used its strategic bombing forces for non nuclear attacks extensively as well, including known use of the B2 against the Houthis and B52 against IS in Syria.
Not disputing this but why would they go from olenya to the Caspian sea to fire at Ukraine? Would make way more sense to fire them from up north?
Russia uses Tu-95’s to launch cruise missiles. This is from late March:
It was later revealed that 11 Tu-95MS bombers fired 29 cruise missiles of the Kh-101/Kh-555 type at Ukraine.
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/tu-95-bomber-same-age-as-putin-used-in-today-1711015673.html
You think they just sit on the runway until someone needs to drop a nuke? So, when Trump redeployed our B-2s to the Indian Ocean, he must’ve been preparing to nuke the Houthis?
On a runway - no. I just would think that such an old and valuable machine would be in some underground concrete hangar and wouldn’t be used to terrorize cities with conventional payload. Because their supposed role is not that.
I think it’d be much smarter to simply use the piece of equipment when its capabilities suit your needs, than treat it like a weirdly-shaped ICBM.
It was intended as part of the system including also ICBMs. But OK, doesn’t matter, late Soviet doctrines were all idiosyncratic anyway. Produced in a stagnating hierarchical system and little-tested.
Also just doctrine being subject to rapid change to suit changing realities during times of war. As an example, we can look to WW1 to see rapidly changing doctrines as it became understood to be necessary, like when the maneuver warfare of the Napoleonic Era quickly shifted to trench warfare.
These attacks will have dealt a significant blow to Russia’s aerial cruise missile strike capability.
Tu-95 bombers, which are among the type of aircraft that have been destroyed, are said to have launched a large-scale Kh-101 missile attack on Ukraine earlier this year. They have been used extensively since the full-scale invasion of February 2022 and so are a vital target for the Ukrainian military. - BBC
It’s not only what they did, but how they did it.
First of all the loss of this aircraft is substantial. They don’t have many more of these aircraft and likely not all are operational at every time, especially now when it’s hard to get parts. And these planes are full of western parts.
And another thing, is not like Russia can throw everything at Ukraine, it’s got other borders to watch.
The second part is how they did it. They snuck into Russia with weapons and carried an embarrassing blow against a country that is basically fighting this war to keep its status as a super power. And this country that they don’t even consider as a country did this to them from the inside. Thats just weak and it’s there for everyone to see. This is shouting for everyone to hear: Russia is no super power, it’s no power at all.
" They snuck into Russia with weapons and carried an embarrassing blow"
Like us after 9/11?
" Russia is no super power, it’s no power at all."
And if that’s true, why do we need NATO? For the group hugs and crying?
You are spewing the same kind of propaganda the other side says about you.
Nato will exist long after Russia has crumbled 😘
And if that’s true, why do we need NATO?
Because even a destitute regional power can still bombard your cities, kill your civilians, and occupy your territory if they’re willing to suffer the results.
How horrible. Is this the only country doing this? Let me guess, when WE do it we have the right reasons?
Let me guess: Russia should bomb Ukraine, because USA does it in other places.
You are so pathetic.
Just explain: why is it OK when we do it?
He never said it is. Most people don’t think it is.
We want NATO as a security, should we ever need it.It’s like paying for insurance: let’s hope you never need it, but are glad to should the need arise. It’s not hard to understand, mate.
We all hope NATO can sit idly by and make plans they never ever need to execute.
Fair.
I don’t care for comparisons, but the comparison to 9/11 is not really accurate.
This is a war between neighbouring countries, one of which calls itself a super power, yet has not only completely failed to achieve it’s goals, it has depleted itself doing it. It has practically destroyed all it’s weapons, which were before the war thought of as limitless, it has reduced it’s gas pump economy to ashes, it has destroyed it’s status and already lost it’s sphere of influence in Syria and elsewhere and … wings wheel above in silent loops… If you know what I mean.
NATO is of course needed beyond Russia, stupid question. Plus Russia still has nukes, which would be safer if Russian state somehow survives this war.
What I’m saying is no propaganda, just a very very sober assessment of the current situation.
Russia has lost immediately when it was clear, that it cannot take Ukraine. It’s perceived status as a super power went down the drain and nobody is taking it seriously anymore. It cannot project power, it cannot hold a sphere of influence.
Christ almighty, I would read that if you could tell its from it’s.
Some of the best news I’ve heard in quite some time!
Judging by Russian TG, they are not exaggerating one bit.
Also rumors of a sub base getting hit, even though one can say today subs Russia has are all tracked.
I wonder about missile silos - if any of them were still operational, maybe they’ve been all sabotaged long ago (or rotted by themselves), and we didn’t know simply because it’s not as visible as burning strategic bombers in the midst of a day.
So apparently Russian regime just got more willing to negotiate.
Which may be kinda good news, because fewer troubles means more attention to each particular one, so the degree of bullshit elsewhere might fall too.
Whether or not Russia’s nukes are functional is immaterial. They know that they don’t know which ones work. They also know they no longer have MAD on their end. All they can do is saber rattle with them, because if they ever try to use them, they know that there is a very good chance that the nukes will fail to detonate, for a variety of reasons, and the immediate retaliation from every other nuclear power, except China, would be the end of Russia.
Well. A lesson to everybody thinking corruption and rattling of sabers are a good combination.
First, I am not a Russia fan or apologist.
…But the Soviets made some good shit, often with the philosophy of “big and simple,” but often well engineered, too. Soyuz has been so reliable it’s unreal, hence it sent astronauts from around the world to space for decades because nothing else was dependable enough.
They did tons of real, oldschool nuclear testing, not simulations like newer powers. They knew what they were doing.
Hence, asserting most of Russia’s warheads are duds is quite an assumption. It’s quite possible. But there’s enough of a track record for the threat to be very real.
With the warheads its not an engineering issue, the fissile material simply stops being viable after a while and you can’t engineer around that, so the question is less about quality and more about if anyone ever replaced that stuff, or if it was replaced if that fissile material was of high enough quality and not say, a block of wood and a new yacht.
Not to mention the high explosives used to trigger nuclear chain reactions degrades over time as well. There are lots of parts to a nuclear weapon that must be regularly maintained/replaced for the weapon to remain viable.
I agree about older Soviet engineering, it’s a bit of a result of digital automation being less available due to domestic computer research being shot down politically in favor of copying IBM and DEC, and also having worse abilities at minimization.
Hence Soviet engineering is how you’d approach building a spacefaring civilization with a slide rule as the baseline instrument, and mostly analog components of everything. That does feel cool.
About warheads - there’s an issue of half-life with nuclear warheads, so that they “rot” is not in doubt, the question is how good the maintenance was.
Fissile material (enriched uranium and plutonium) has a long half-life.
AFAIK tritium is the biggest issue, with a half life of 12.3 years. From what I’ve read, nukes have little feeder tubes to replenish that.
This is going to have the secondary effect of exploding rats but times a thousand.
During WWII the brits planted dead rats filled with explosives around german facilities, as it was common practice to simply throw dead rats into the boiler fireboxes, where these rats in questions would explode and hopefully deal damage to important equipment. Almost no real damage was done but simply finding the rats was enough to make the Germans so paranoid that the extra caution and paranoia did more damage than the rats ever would have if they had gone undiscovered (and thrown into boilers as planned)
With the 9/11 reference above, it had a similar effect on airport security. The TSA has been making traveling hell ever since and I’m not sure if they’ve actually stopped any real threats (cursory search says nope).
And they’ve consistently failed to catch threats in tests.
Security theatre is expensive though.
If this is true, if Ukraine really has dealt as much damage to the Russian bomber fleet as they claim they have, then this is tremendous.
Fuck 'em up!
Fuck the blyats.
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I’m always surprised that you’d leave stuff lying around like that when at war.
2500+ miles from the front line? where would you stash your arsenal of strategic bombers?
Underground, 5 miles away from the “official” position, while I put decoys everywhere.
Its russia
