Recall that Ukraine disarmed in 1994 in exchange for security assurances by Russia, the US, and the UK, assurances that ultimately weren’t kept. By reportedly damaging about a third of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers, Sunday’s Operation Spider’s Web (Павутина) began the process of disarming Russia. (Follow-up analyses can be read here, here, here, and here.)
Memes circulating about the event — such as Zelensky showing Trump the hand of cards he actually had up his sleeve, or asking Trump and Vance (or Big and Little TACO, as some are calling them) for a “thank you” — can easily be found. (Here’s a good sample.)
Roman Sheremeta, writing on Facebook, notes insightfully about why Ukraine disclosed the information as rapidly as it did:
By revealing how the operation was executed — including the use of concealed drones inside decoy trucks driven across 5,000 kilometers of russian territory — Ukraine isn’t just celebrating a tactical success. It’s imposing a psychological and economic cost on russia.
Now, every russian cargo truck becomes a potential threat. Every driver is suspect. As a result, russian authorities will be forced to:
- Divert resources to inspect and monitor domestic transport routes.
- Increase surveillance and internal security along tens of thousands of kilometers of highways.
- Slow down military and civilian logistics across the entire country.
- Mistrust their own citizens — especially private drivers and contractors — creating paranoia and bottlenecks.
This will drive up the cost of russian supply chains, strain already stretched infrastructure, and potentially cause internal friction. Ukraine didn’t just destroy aircraft — it weaponized uncertainty within the russian system.
This is how modern asymmetric warfare works: you don’t need to match your enemy plane-for-plane. You just need to make their whole system start doubting itself.
The last point deserves more consideration, as it holds a lesson for the U.S. and everyone else. As Noah Smith writes, Chinese drones could bring down America in a similar way.
As you read this, military planners all over the world are scrambling to come up with defenses against the kind of raid that Ukraine just carried out. Dozens of container ships arrive in American ports from China every day, each with thousands of containers. The containers on the ships then get unloaded and sent by road and rail to destinations all over the country. Imagine a hundred of those containers suddenly blossoming into swarms of drones, taking out huge chunks of America’s multi-trillion-dollar air force and navy in a few minutes.
Assessing the military significance of Operation Spider’s Web will take some time. Calling it a “Pearl Harbor moment” for Russia, however, as some have been doing, plays into the hands of their anticipated propaganda.
A more appropriate analogy than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor might be Kyïvan Grand Princess (Kniahynia) Olha’s revenge against the Derevliany, a story Russians and Ukrainians should both know well. In particular, one might think of the brilliant tactic of sending back “tribute” homing pigeons to their houses carrying sulfur, which subsequently burned the homes of their owners (pigeons coming home to roost, indeed). You can read the full version of the story in English here: https://museumhack.com/olga-of-kiev/ (I’m describing “phase four”).
That, combined with a David-vs.-Goliath switch in expectations.
For now, I’m happy to share my sentiment through Odilon Redon’s 1887 lithograph “Smiling Spider” (L’Araignée):
Adrian Ivakhiv holds the J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, and was previously the Steven Rubenstein Professor of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. He is the author or editor of several books including the forthcoming ‘Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth’ (McGill-Queens University Press, 2025).
This article first appeared on UKR-TAZ: A Ukrainian Temporary Autonomous Zone.