The Strange Defeat of Nuclear Deterrence

And the Coming Crisis in Strategic Stability

In June 2025, Ukraine’s security services staged an audacious strike inside Russia. They infiltrated the country and hid short-range attack drones in cargo trucks near a slew of Russian air bases as far away as the Amur region on the border with China. Most of these bases were home to Russian strategic heavy bombers—aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Using Russia’s mobile phone network, Ukrainian operatives remotely launched the drones, successfully destroying at least ten of the bombers and damaging a total of 41 planes, including some used for nuclear command and control, according to Ukrainian assessments.

Known as Operation Spider’s Web, this assault was a remarkable gambit. The most significant aspect of the attack, however, was not its astonishing cost ratio—as one analyst put it, “a single drone costing just $500 destroyed a strategic bomber worth tens of millions of dollars”—or its ingenuity in hijacking Russian telecommunications, but the fact that it could happen at all. As part of its long-standing doctrine, Moscow had insisted that a conventional attack on its strategic assets could provoke a nuclear response. But that did not stop Kyiv. Ukraine was willing to go after Russia’s nuclear capabilities, and Russia was unable to prevent their destruction.