117 Drones, 18-Month Plan: Zelenskyy Reveals Details of Major Strike Inside Russia
In a dramatic escalation of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday revealed that Ukraine executed a massive drone operation deep into Russian territory, using 117 drones to strike military targets—including strategic bombers—after 18 months of meticulous planning.
The high-risk attack, which reportedly damaged over 40 Russian aircraft and blew up a highway bridge as a train passed over it, comes just hours ahead of fresh Ukraine-Russia peace talks set to begin Monday in Istanbul.
Zelenskyy called the strike a “brilliant operation” that was “perfectly executed,” targeting military installations used by Moscow to attack Ukraine. He added that Ukrainian teams operated in multiple Russian regions across three time zones, and all personnel involved in the mission were safely extracted.
According to Ukrainian officials, this was among the largest drone offensives since the war began in 2022. The assault was so deep it struck Russian military infrastructure thousands of kilometres from the border. Ukrainian drones reportedly hit 34% of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers at key airbases.
Zelenskyy, in a statement on X, described the attack as “genuinely satisfying,” and revealed that the mission was coordinated from an undisclosed office near an FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) regional headquarters.
“It’s genuinely satisfying when something I authorised a year and six months ago comes to fruition and deprives Russians of over forty units of strategic aviation,” Zelenskyy wrote.
He emphasized that the operation was not random but timed with intelligence that suggested Russia was preparing a large-scale strike against Ukraine. “It is very important for all our people not to ignore the air raid alerts,” he added.
The Ukrainian leader further stressed that continued pressure on Russia—militarily, economically, and diplomatically—was essential to ending the conflict.
The attack came just ahead of a scheduled round of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul on Monday. However, Zelenskyy claimed that Moscow had yet to share its peace proposal memorandum, which Ukraine, the U.S., and Turkey were expecting.
“The Russians have not shared their ‘memorandum’ with anyone… Despite this, we will try to achieve at least some progress toward peace,” he said.
Moscow, meanwhile, reiterated that it wants to address what it calls the “root causes” of the war—among them Ukraine’s NATO ambitions and its military capabilities, alongside territorial disputes.
The massive drone strike has raised fresh concerns in global diplomatic circles about the trajectory of the conflict, already Europe’s deadliest since World War II. International observers say the Istanbul talks now carry added urgency.
