Inside the drone attack that left Russia's top brass humiliated

The daring raids on Putin's bomber force were a slap in the face of the Kremlin, Ukraine's jubilant commanders tell Nina Kuryata

- Nina Kuryata

Ten days ago Aleksandr Z, a lorry driver from Chelyabinsk in the Urals, was hired by someone he took to be a local businessman to deliver two pre-fabricated wooden huts to an address near Murmansk, a three-day drive away in the Russian Arctic.

Having agreed a price, he loaded the cargo on to his lorry. En route, he received detailed instructions "from an unknown individual" on when and where to stop, which turned out to be near a Rosneft petrol station close to a military airfield.

He followed the instructions and when he stopped was surprised to see the huts' roofs slide off automatically and more than a dozen drones fly off towards the airfield.

Similar deliveries took huts and drones to designated launch sites from European Russia to central Siberia, and the rest is an astonishing piece of military history.

It is one that delivered "a serious slap in the face to the power and terrorist nature of the Russian federation", according to General Vasyl Maliuk, head of Ukraine's SBU security service. It could also change the course of the war.