Ukraine’s air strikes on Russian air fields “strategically important”: academic opinion

Posted on 4 June 2025 • Arts and social sciences, Society and politics

As Russia has been left counting the cost of multiple Ukrainian drone strikes on its air fields over the weekend, Dr Precious Chatterje-Doody, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at The Open University, focuses on three key factors in this latest stage of the war.

The first key point is that these were the most far reaching of Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia and they range all the way from the Arctic region to the Far East.

Clear message for Russia

Coming hot on the heels of massive drone and missile attacks by Russia inside Ukraine, the message was very clear, that no Russian regions are immune from the same.

The second key point is just how much Russian elites are struggling to spin this. Footage of the attacks is all over social media so they can’t simply deny that they happened.

Instead, they are referring to terrorist attacks and admitting that there was some arson but stating that the damage has been very minimal and that there are no real injuries as a result of this.

Too hard to spin

When it comes to state TV, where the majority of Russians get their news, in fact, this is not appearing on the main bulletins because it is simply too hard to spin for the general public.

The final point it that whilst operations like these take months in the planning, the timing of this coming to fruition is strategically important for Ukraine as it goes into successive rounds of talks with Russia.

This doesn’t, however, mean that we are likely to see a quicker resolution to hostilities, in fact, just the opposite as Ukraine’s position now looks much strengthened from when it was thought it had no more cards left to play.

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