Operation Spiderweb, June 1, 2025 - truck drones hit air bases

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) says it struck four Russian air bases on June 1, 2025 with 117 drones hidden in trucks: Belaya, Olenya, Dyagilevo and Ivanovo, the Kyiv Independent reported. A fifth strike, on Ukrainka air base in the Amur region, failed. At 11:00 UTC that day, the hour before the first report, the 80 m wind blew south-east over three of the four bases and south-west over Olenya.

How were the drones brought close to the bases?

The trucks drove to the cities of Ivanovo and Ryazan and into the Murmansk, Irkutsk and Amur regions, the Kyiv Independent reported. The truck cabins opened remotely at the time of the strikes. The Kyiv Post described the drones as hidden beneath wooden houses mounted on the trucks.

The drones were first-person-view (FPV) drones, small craft that a pilot flies remotely through an onboard camera, Euromaidan Press reported.

The operation was in the works for more than 18 months. SBU sources gave that figure to the Kyiv Post and to Ukrinform, and President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated it.

Which bases were struck, and where are they?

Base	Region
Olenya	Murmansk, Arctic north-west
Belaya	Irkutsk, eastern Siberia
Dyagilevo	Ryazan, south-east of Moscow
Ivanovo Severny	Ivanovo, north-east of Moscow
Ukrainka (failed)	Amur, Russian Far East

Irkutsk governor Igor Kobzev said drones launched from a parked truck hit a military unit in the village of Sredny, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported.

How do the aircraft counts compare?

The estimates differ, and each comes from a different source:

• SBU (Ukraine): 41 aircraft struck, per Ukrinform.
• Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council: at least 13 destroyed, per The War Zone. The outlet, which used Maxar satellite imagery, wrote that the 41 aircraft were "clearly not all destroyed or even damaged."
• US officials: about 20 aircraft hit and about 10 destroyed, two officials told Reuters.
• Satellite images: AviVector images taken on June 3 show at least four Tu-95 strategic bombers completely destroyed at Olenya, and three Tu-95s and four Tu-22M3s destroyed at Belaya, the Barents Observer reported.

Russia's Ministry of Defence said aviation equipment caught fire in the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions and that strikes in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions were repelled, the Kyiv Post reported.

What was the wind at the bases?

No source gives the time of the strikes. The first published report, by the Kyiv Post, appeared at 11:52 UTC, so AirVeto read the wind for 11:00 UTC, the last full hour before it.

At 80 m, the wind was blowing south-east at Belaya (19 km/h), Dyagilevo (30 km/h) and Ivanovo (24 km/h). At Olenya it was blowing south-west at 25 km/h, and at Ukrainka south at 19 km/h. The data is Open-Meteo's historical model forecast, not a measurement.

This event predates AirVeto's archive, which starts in August 2025; the method is in the methodology. For a drone strike inside Russia reconstructed the same way, see the Yandex data centre strikes.