FT: Russia Will Never Rebuild Its Strategic Bomber Fleet After The Spider Web
5- 4.06.2025, 8:50
- 9,800
The SBU operation was an epic failure for the Kremlin.
Aggressor country Russia may never recover its fleet of strategic bombers, which it lost as a result of the SBU's Operation Web. That may force Moscow to rethink how it conducts air attacks on Ukraine.
This is according to a Financial Times piece. While the impact on Russia's nuclear capabilities is likely to be unpleasant but limited, the attack will affect the Russians' day-to-day operations against Ukraine, analysts said.
Michael Coffman, a military analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Ukraine strikes have "undoubtedly degraded Russia's retaliatory strike capability," destroying aircraft that the Russian Federation will have difficulty replacing.
"While this may not be enough to stop the strikes on Ukraine, given the size of Russia's bomber fleet, it showed that continuing the war has a real cost to Russia's status as a militarist power," he said.
Fabian Hoffmann, a researcher at the University of Oslo, said that although many Russian bombers were undergoing maintenance, "these aircraft were among the most operational, which makes these losses particularly devastating."
So now Russia will not only have fewer bombers to attack Ukraine, but will also have to consider changing its tactics. In particular, whether it can risk grouping planes together, an approach it has recently used to launch massive strikes on Ukraine.
And if Russia is forced to disperse them more for protection, that would directly reduce their ability to carry out such strikes and overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, said William Alberk, a former NATO arms control official now at the Stimson Center.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the bombers targeted in the strikes - Soviet Tu-95s and Tu-22M3s - are no longer in production. Moscow may give up trying to replace the lost fleet altogether, which could take "years, perhaps even decades," Alberk said.
According to Alexei Melnik, a Ukrainian military analyst at the Razumkov Center and a former military officer, Operation Web hit strategic bombers that Russia is now unable to produce, so they are lost to the enemy.
"This is an epic failure from a professional point of view, and the Russians will have to look for answers to some very difficult questions, and they will have to blame somebody," he said.
William Alberk added that the attack was a signal to Moscow that even areas far from the Ukrainian border could no longer be considered safe.
"There is a perception among Russians that the very size of the country provides strategic depth - a kind of defense. What the Ukrainians have done is a blow to the heart of that assumption," the expert emphasized.
CNN also noted that Ukraine's large-scale Operation Web could change the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war. It showed that the ability to progress in technology significantly affects the effectiveness of the use of weapons.
Bank's name: Bank Millennium S.A.
Address: ul. Stanislawa Zaryna, 2A, 02-593, Warszawa
IBAN: PL97116022020000000216711123
SWIFT: BIGBPLPW
Name of the account holder: Fundacja “KARTA ‘97”
Purpose/title of payment: Donation for statuary aims
You can contact us by the e-mail charter97@gmail.com
