In the annals of high espionage, derring-do and successful madcap military schemes, Artem Tymofieiev surely deserves his place. The Russians would certainly like to know his whereabouts today. A nationwide manhunt is underway.
The mysterious Mr Tymofieiev has been identified as the Ukrainian secret agent who ran one of the most audacious and brilliantly executed military operations in modern history.
Operation Chastise, the Dambusters Raid – in which RAF Lancasters breached two Ruhr dams with bouncing bombs in 1943 – has long been the yardstick against which other unlikely coups de main have been measured.
I would argue that Operation Spider’s Web, which the Ukrainian Secret Service – the SBU – executed on Sunday afternoon, exceeds even that exploit in breathtaking scope and impact. Simultaneously, across three time zones and thousands of miles from the Ukrainian border, swarms of FPV (first-person view) kamikaze drones struck four Russian air bases.
These were home to the Kremlin’s strategic long-range bombers.
Yesterday Kyiv claimed that in a stroke it had destroyed 34 per cent of Russia‘s heavy bomber fleet, inflicting some $7billion worth of damage.
Mobile phone footage of palls of smoke rising from the bases during the attacks, video feed from the drones and satellite images of the aftermath: all seem to bear out the claim.
The operation was an astonishing triumph. Russian military bloggers have likened the attack’s surprise and devastation to that inflicted by the Japanese on the US Navy at Pearl Harbour. But how on earth did the Ukrainians manage to pull it off?
Russian media published a photo of the suspected organiser of the airfield drone attacks, claiming he’s Ukrainian
As more information emerges from a triumphant Kyiv and a humiliated Moscow, we can start to piece together the Spider’s Web story.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Russia’s heavy bomber fleet has caused widespread death and destruction. Originally designed during the Cold War as strategic nuclear bombers, the aircraft have been repurposed to carry conventional ‘stand-off’ cruise missiles.
These are launched from inside Russian airspace, well out of reach of Ukrainian air defence systems.
All three of the heavy bomber variants in service have immense payloads. The TU-95 ‘Bear’, a turboprop relic of the 1950s, can carry 16 air-launched cruise missiles. The TU-22 ‘Blinder’, Russia’s first supersonic bomber, has the capacity to launch the supersonic Kh-22 missile, which has the speed to evade most Ukrainian air defences. The TU-160 ‘Blackjack’, Russia’s most modern strategic bomber, can carry up to 24 Kh-15 cruise missiles on one mission.
These planes have brought nightly terror to Ukrainian cities.
Nothing could be done to stop them, it seemed.
Due to the growing range and accuracy of the Ukrainian attack drone fleet, the bombers had been moved to bases deep inside Russia that weren’t vulnerable to retaliation. Some were as far away as Siberia and the Arctic Circle.
So, 18 months ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky summoned SBU chief Lieutenant General Vasyl Maliuk and told him to find a way to take the war to the heavy bombers’ hideouts.
Ukraine’s drones were hidden under the roofs of mobile cabins, which were later mounted onto trucks. They were then piloted remotely to their targets
How though to strike thousands of kilometres beyond the range of Ukraine’s furthest- reaching missile or drone? Not to mention penetrating one of the world’s most sophisticated air defence systems?
Then someone had an idea that must have sounded crazy at first – like Barnes Wallis suggesting his bouncing bomb.
Why not drive the kamikaze drones in trucks up to the perimeter of the air bases and launch them over the fence?
To do this, the drones would need to be smuggled into Russia and hidden somewhere secure. When the time came to attack, the UAV swarms would have to be concealed on commercial vehicles that would not arouse suspicion.
And that is aside from the issue of launching the drones at the targets in such a way that would not expose the operators or agents on the ground to immediate reprisal or capture.
A base was needed inside the Russian Federation from which the Spider’s Web logistics could be marshalled and the attack launched. That meant, of course, there would have to be a Ukrainian agent on the ground, far behind enemy lines, at enormous personal risk.
The indications are that the location chosen for Spider’s Web’s Russian ‘office’ – as President Zelensky called it – was the small city of Chelyabinsk. It lies more than 1,000 miles east of Moscow but – and this might have been significant for the smuggling aspect of the operation – only 85 miles by road north of the border with neutral Kazakhstan.
Russian mili-bloggers have identified a warehouse in Chelyabinsk as being the Spider’s Web hub. Rented for 350,000 rubles (£3,250) a month, this was allegedly where the drones and their launchers were assembled and sent on their way. Zelensky also suggested that the ‘office’ was next door to the local headquarters of the FSB – the federal security service that replaced the KGB. He did not reveal the location.
Head of Ukraine’s Security Service Vasyl Maliuk looks at a map of an airfield amid Russia’s attack
But who was to run this extremely complex and high stakes operation?
The man whom the Russian Interior Ministry suspect of being the local mastermind is of course Artem Tymofieiev. His name and photograph are being circulated by the authorities, his capture a priority.
According to Russian sources, Tymofieiev was born in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr, lived in Kyiv and moved to Chelyabinsk ‘several years ago’, working as an ‘entrepreneur’.
Was he a sleeper agent from the start? If so, he made no secret of his support for Ukraine, friends are alleged to have said. But how could he be a threat in such a strategically insignificant place, thousands of miles from the war?
He was, as one Russian blogger has put it, ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’. The drones were to be carried to the targets and launched remotely from wooden cabins carried on the flat beds of heavy lorries. According to President Zelensky they were then piloted remotely to their targets.
Four air bases had been identified: Belaya airfield in Irkutsk oblast, Siberia, more than 4,000km from Ukraine; the Olenya air base in the Arctic Circle near Murmansk; the Diaghilev air base in Ryazan oblast; and a base near the city of Ivanovo.
How to get the drones from the Kazakh border to these places? Chelyabinsk is 2,000 miles from Murmansk, 1,750 miles to Irkutsk and more than 1,000 miles to the other two bases.
But such distances are routinely traversed by Russian lorry drivers. And that was the brilliantly simple method by which this high-tech attack was progressed.
Russian TU-95 Bear strategic bombers at the Olenya airbase on the Kola Peninsula being destroyed by Ukrainian drones thousands of miles away from the front line
The explosion seen from a road as bystanders are stopped in their tracks
‘Artem’ seems to have employed four unwitting heavy goods drivers to transport what they thought were simply wooden framed houses to different locations across the Russian Federation. According to the SBU, the drones were hidden under the house roofs. According to Russian sources, the trucks were all registered to ‘Artem’.
Driver Alexander Z, 55, from Chelyabinsk has reportedly told investigators he received an order to transport ‘frame houses’ to the Murmansk region from a businessman named Artem, who provided the truck.
Driver Andrei M, 61, reportedly said he was told by Artem to transport wooden houses to Irkutsk. Driver Sergey, 46, had an identical story. He was told to transport modular houses to Ryazan. Another driver was sent to Ivanovo.
So the scene was set for Spider’s Web’s spectacular denouement.
The 48 hours leading up to Zero Hour saw Ukraine’s intelligence services demonstrating its ability to launch ever deeper strikes into enemy territory – and Russia striking back with record ferocity. Last Friday, Ukraine struck targets in Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast. Seven thousand miles from the frontier, this was the furthest that Ukraine had hit inside Russia.
The following night, at least seven people were killed and another 69 injured, after a train bound for Moscow was derailed by an explosion in Bryansk oblast, which borders Ukraine.
Retaliation was not long coming. Within hours Russia launched its biggest drone blitz of the war – 472 UAVs in one night.
The following morning, Sunday, June 1, a Russian missile struck a training ground in Dnipro oblast, killing 12 soldiers and wounding 60 more. This prompted the Commander of Land Forces Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi to tender his resignation.
A blow for Ukraine. But as nothing to what it would strike in return.
Sunday, June 1, approximately 1pm local time. It is Russia’s Military Transport Aviation Day.
While en route, Driver Alexander Z had been called on his mobile by an unknown person who told him exactly where to stop. This was the Rosneft petrol station next to the Olenya air base.
Driver Andrei M had been briefed to park at the Teremok cafe in Usolye-Sibirskoye, beside the Belaya base. Almost as soon as the drivers stopped where instructed, the world seemed to explode around them.
According to the SBU, the truck trailer roofs were ‘remotely opened’ and the drone swarms launched from within. They had only a few hundred metres to reach their targets.
Surprise was complete and local defences helpless. As all four attacks were launched at the same time, it seems, no alert could be usefully circulated.
Social media footage of the Belaya attack appears to show drones emerging from the rear trailer of Andrei M’s articulated wagon. It is parked on the far side of a busy highway which runs alongside the air base perimeter.
What looks like roofing panels are lying on the ground beside the truck, suggesting that they were blown off rather than hinged.
Driver Sergey did not even get the chance to stop before the roof of his Scania truck’s trailer blew off and more drones began flying out and towards the target base.
Some 117 kamikaze drones were used in the attacks, according to President Zelensky, controlled by the same number of pilots.
Each air base could have been hit by as many as 30 drones simultaneously. Sources suggest that the SBU used Russia’s own mobile network to communicate with and guide the large ‘quadcopter’ drones. To do so they must have had Russian sim cards or modems.
The targets were sitting ducks, the destruction immense.
The Ukrainians released video from a drone flying over a line of Russian heavy bombers neatly parked at Belaya. One of the bombers is hit by another drone, which explodes as the camera drone approaches.
Among the 41 aircraft claimed destroyed by the Ukrainians is a Beriev A-50 early warning and control plane, of which Russia has fewer than ten.
The first satellite images of the aftermath at Belaya appear to show six TU-22 type bombers destroyed and a TU-95MS visibly damaged.
‘We will strike them at sea, in the air and on the ground,’ the SBU declared. ‘If needed we’ll get them from the underground too.’
And what of the mysterious Mr Tymofieiev? All those behind the operation ‘have been in Ukraine for a long time’ now, the SBU claims. Spider’s Web’s triumph, it seems, is complete.
- Additional reporting by Oleksandr Kostiuchenko
