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Heather Cox Richardson
Foreign 2025 On June 1, Ukrainian forces struck deep inside Russia in Operation Spiderweb. 117 drones, each operated by its own pilot, hit airfields in five regions. Ukraine says the drones hit 41 strategic bombers that had been attacking Ukrainian cities and destroyed at least 13 of Russia does not have the industrial capabilities to replace them. The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU head Vasil Malyuk emphasized that military airfields and the aircraft that are bombing Ukraine are absolutely legitimate targets according to the laws and customs of War. The SBU estimates the drones did $7 billion of damage to hitting 34% of the aircraft that delivered cruise missiles. The operation took more than 18 months of planning. It apparently involved sending trucks loaded with wooden cabins that had detachable roofs that could be opened remotely. Unsuspecting truck drivers hauled the cabins to locations near air bases where the drones launched. Once the drones were in the air, the vehicles carrying the cabins exploded. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the people who helped with the operation from within Russia had been withdrawn and are now safe. Russia denied that the damage was that extensive. But there is no doubt that the attack was a significant blow to Russia's war effort, demonstrating as it does that Ukraine can bring the war home. As Katerina Bonder of the Washington, D.C. think tank center for Strategic and International Studies notes, June 1 was military transport Aviation Day in Russia, a significant holiday for the armed forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently ties operations to significant dates, as when he hosted a number of American lawmakers in Moscow on July 4, 2018, and the choice of this date for an attack on military aircraft threw that habit back at him. Analysts recognized the Ukrainian attack as a new moment in warfare. Using apparently unwitting civilians, the Ukrainians managed to get their drones close enough to their targets to avoid Russia's air defense systems. Then, Bonder explains, the drones relied on a system that allowed operators to pilot them to the plane's strategic weaknesses. The drones themselves cost between $600 and $1000 apiece, and by using deception technology and strategic surprise, the Ukrainians managed to destroy billion of dollars worth of aircraft. Bonder notes that the attack heralds a change in modern warfare in which technological agility will trump industrial capacity. An advantage will go to those countries that can adapt quickly to changing conditions. Some observers are calling the attack the Russian Pearl Harbor, a reference to the attack by the Japanese Navy on the U.S. pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, an attack that led to the US entry into World War II. But Russia has been attacking Ukraine since 2014 and launched a full scale invasion in 2022. This attack illustrates extraordinary vulnerability at this point rather as if Pearl harbor had happened in early 1945. A former commander of US Army Europe, retired US Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling posted For months some believed that Ukraine didn't hold any cards. Many of us have refuted that claim, saying an inflection point due to failing Russian war economy and continued lack of Russian leadership adaptation, but especially due to a continued strong Ukrainian government, military and population support and will mixed with their innovative use of special operations, uncrewed systems, various drones and fiber optic capabilities to counter Russian electronic warfare would soon be felt on the battlefield. The coordinated and synchronized attack today, which appears to have decimated much of the Russian air fleet that were based over 4000 km from the front line, is showing that Ukraine certainly has many aces in the hole. Hertling's comment that some thought Ukraine didn't hold any cards is a reference to President Donald J. Trump, who ambushed Zelensky in the oval office on February 28, warning him that Ukraine must cut a deal with Putin because Zelensky didn't have the cards to win the war. With that meeting, Trump signaled that U.S. policy, which has supported Ukraine since 1994, would change to favor Russia. In the 1994 Budapest memorandum on Security Assistances, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the U.S. the United Kingdom and Russia that they would honor the sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, a promise Russia broke when it invaded Ukraine's Crimea in 2014. During the 2024 US presidential election campaign, Trump vowed that he would end the war in Ukra in a single day, maybe with a single phone call. And as other victories have slipped away from him, he has appeared frustrated that such an achievement has proved more difficult than he thought. After the Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainians agreed to a 30 day ceasefire on March 11, but Russia has consistently refused to agree unless Ukraine accepts major territorial concessions and permits Russia to dictate that it not join the defensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO. Rather than negotiating, Putin has launched repeated attacks on Ukrainian civil targets. On Sunday, May 25, Russia launched the largest air attack on Ukraine since the war began, and the week before it launched its largest drone attack. Those attacks happened even as Trump was talking directly with Putin, allegedly about a ceasefire. The White House policy has skewed heavily toward Russia against Ukraine, even to the point that Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, relied on Putin's own translators during negotiations on February 11, March 13 and April 11. While Putin speaks English, Witkoff does not speak Russian. Trump claims to be frustrated with Putin, at one point calling him absolutely crazy, which prompted Putin's spokesperson to suggest that Trump was suffering from emotional overload. On May 27, Trump appeared to acknowledge his long standing relationship with Putin when he posted on his social media site, what Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia. And I mean really bad. He's playing with fire. And yet, although more than 80 senators from both parties have co sponsored a bill to impose stronger sanctions against Russia, Trump has refused to back it, thus stalling it. Meanwhile, Benedict Smith of the Telegraph today covered State Department acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Darren Beatty, who dismantled the office that countered disinformation from Russia, China, China and Iran in 2021. Smith notes Beatty married a Russian national whose uncle has ties to Putin. Beatty was dismissed from the first Trump administration after attending a white nationalist rally. He has attacked the United States as the globalist American empire and said that Putin should infiltrate Western institutions to fight woke ideology. In 2021, Beatty wrote that the position of the US in the global order is rapidly deteriorating and that he looked forward to its prestige and power collapsing. Praising Putin as brave and strong, he said that Putin had done more to advance conservative positions in the US Than any Republican and that just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and control by Putin. Beatty also wrote NATO is a far worse threat to the health, liberty, freedom and flourishing of American citizens than Russia and China combined. Administration officials said the Ukrainians did not notify them before launching Operation Spiderweb on Tuesday. Ukrainian forces detonated underwater explosives attached to the Kirch Bridge connecting Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula. This is Ukraine's third attack on the bridge since 2022. The SBU said the explosives severely damaged bridge supports, but the bridge reopened hours later. The Ukrainian operations are only the most dramatic developments in ongoing stories today that show the Trump administration is not calling all the shots. Trump's vow to negotiate trade deals in place of his tariff walls has not yet produced those deals, and the White House today says it's likely that a call will take place this week with China's leader Xi Jinping. But Ling Ling Wei of the Wall Street Journal explained yesterday that she has made it clear China will play hardball with the U.S. daniel Russell, assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration Phelim Kine Daniel Desroche Megan Messerly and Ari Hawkins of Politico. Beijing has a sharp nose for weakness, and for all his bravado, Trump is signaling eagerness, even desperation, to cut a direct deal with Xi that only stiffens Beijing's resolve. Biden administration National Security Council deputy senior director for China and Taiwan Rush Doshi noted that Chinese officials see Trump as unpredictable and that Chinese diplomats don't usually put the leader at risk of a potentially embarrassing or unpredictable encounter. Jake Lahat of Wired reported yesterday that Trump advisers are themselves tired of right wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has Trump's ear. Their comments to Lahat appeared designed to put pressure on Trump to push her away, a sign that, for now anyway, she is entrenched. Newark, N.J. mayor Ross Baraka, whom Department of Homeland Security agents arrested on May 9, 2025, has sued the Acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Haba, and the special agent in charge of the Newark Division of Homeland Security Investigations, Ricky J. Patel, for false arrest and malicious prosecution. He's suing Habba alone for defamation. The suit outlines Habba's public statements against Democrats in New Jersey and her vow to turn New Jersey red. It says Habba acted as a political operative in her individual personal capacity, outside of any function intimately related to the judicial process. When she posted on her social media account that Baraka committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. After repeated similar public statements, Habba dropped all charges. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took down her list of sanctuary cities she said weren't cooperating with federal immigration. Author after the National Sheriff's association demanded an apology, Trump began today by attacking Senator Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, for his opposition to the extraordinary cost of Republicans omnibus bill, insisting that the bill would create tremendous growth. But this afternoon, billionaire Elon Musk took a firm stand against Trump's one big beautiful bill, posting on x I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it. Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, released a report showing that Musk's net worth has increased by more than $100 billion since election day. The report listed the many ways in which he has used his position in the federal government to stop investigations into his companies, undercut regulations, win federal contracts, gain access to data and sensitive information, attack his enemies, meddle in elections, and secure foreign deals, all without informing the American people of his conflicts of interest. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, MA. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss, RA.