Ukraine has launched one of its most audacious attacks of the war using a ‘swarm’ of kamikaze drones unleashed from the backs of trucks to devastate two of Russia’s most major airfields.

Dubbed ‘Operation Spiderweb’, the co-ordinated strikes have left Vladimir Putin humiliated and his prized warplanes in smouldering ruins.

Two remote military airfields, Olenya in the Arctic Murmansk region and Belaya in eastern Siberia, were rocked by massive explosions overnight, with dramatic footage showing fires raging for hours.

The bases, located thousands of miles from Ukraine, are key to Russia’s nuclear strike capability and were considered untouchable.

Yet Ukraine appears to have struck them with deadly precision, using first-person-view (FPV) drones launched from unmarked vans parked near the airfields.

Both are thousands of miles from Ukraine but were ‘under drone attack’, with dozens of Moscow‘s nuclear capable warplanes evidently destroyed.

Olenya airbase is home to Russia‘s ageing fleet of Tu-95 ‘Bear’ bombers – used both for conventional missile strikes and capable of launching nuclear weapons against the West. Several of the aircraft were reportedly left exposed in the open, despite repeated Ukrainian attacks on similar facilities.

Ablaze, too, was Belaya nuclear airbase in eastern Siberia’s Irkutsk region – some 2,900 miles from Ukraine.

More alarmingly, the strikes have triggered frenzied calls within Russia’s military circles for a nuclear response. ‘Disabling strategic aircraft gives Russia the right to use nuclear weapons,’ declared pro-Kremlin war analyst Vladislav Pozdnyakov. ‘Let me remind you.’