Zelensky's Gamut: A tactical masterstroke that threatens strategic collapse

How Russia will respond to the shock is the critical question in world captials

- BY M A HOSSAIN

By any military measure, Ukraine's 'Operation Spider Web' was an astonishing success.

In a meticulously planned operation, Ukrainian drones struck deep into Russian territory, obliterating at least 40 military aircraft—including nuclear-capable Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers—in a single, devastating blow. The attack revealed not only meticulous Ukrainian planning over 18 months but also the glaring vulnerabilities of Russia’s so-called impenetrable airspace. It was a coup de main that will be studied in military academies for decades. But as history too often reminds us, tactical brilliance can be the prelude to strategic disaster. The world now holds its breath, waiting to see what comes next.

The immediate question is not whether Russia will respond—it will—but how. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy must now reckon with that distinction. Launched on the eve of scheduled peace talks in Istanbul, Spider Web didn’t just dismantle a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet—it may also have dismantled the fragile architecture of diplomacy that remained. If this was a calculated move to strengthen Ukraine's bargaining position, it was cynically timed and perilously shortsighted. It risks transforming what was still, however tenuously, a brutal regional war into an epoch-defining catastrophe.

We've seen this before. In 1914, the assassination of an Austrian archduke triggered a cascade of commitments, mobilizations, and miscalculations that led to a global conflagration. In 1941, Japan, feeling cornered by U.S. embargoes, attacked Pearl Harbour—a masterstroke of surprise that ultimately led to its own annihilation. And in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the planet within inches of nuclear oblivion, saved only by backchannel diplomacy and the mutual recognition of unacceptable costs.