Bernard-Henri Lévy: Drone attack shows why Ukraine will win this war

by Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French philosopher, writer, documentary filmmaker, political journalist, and war correspondent.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

The Ukrainian operation on Sunday was a coordinated attack on four airports in Russia reaching as deep as Siberia. It neutralized 41 “strategic aircraft” and was a brilliant technical performance.

Over more than 18 months, hundreds of drones were smuggled deep into Russia. They were loaded onto civilian trucks with double-bottomed trailers, where they were concealed inside mobile boxes. The tops of those boxes—remotely controlled by operators in Ukraine but connected to the Russian telephone network—opened at the appointed time, allowing the drones to take off. All 41 targets were carefully studied for months by Ukrainian intelligence, and they exploded simultaneously without civilian casualties.

This is the Ukrainian equivalent of the September 2024 pager attack in which Israel annihilated nearly all of Hezbollah’s active forces. It is one of those operations of crazy audacity and unparalleled ingenuity that make military history. It will be taught for ages in war schools.

This achievement was a slap in the face to Russia—and not the first. At the beginning of the war, there was the Moskva cruiser, the flagship of its fleet, sunk off Odesa by two Ukrainian-made missiles. Then, the double strike on the Kerch Bridge, Vladimir Putin’s pride, the jewel of his cardboard crown and a symbol of the continuity he believed he was establishing between Crimea and Russia. Last year, half of Mr. Putin’s fleet in the Black Sea was destroyed. The other half retreated pitifully to Novorossiysk or the Sea of Azov. Also in 2024, Ukraine staged an offensive in Russia’s Kursk region.

Sigmund Freud spoke of the three humiliations on Western man—inflicted by Copernicus, Darwin and Freud himself. If Volodymyr Zelensky had the heart to laugh, he could speak of the five humiliations he has inflicted on that enemy of the West: Russia. Mr. Putin and his people stand exposed as braggarts, paper tigers. Ukraine is David to the Goliath of Russia, nearly 30 times its size.

Sunday’s operation is further proof that the Ukrainian army, through sacrifice and adversity, has forged itself into the boldest, brightest and best in Europe. I witnessed its evolution as I prepared my documentaries on the war.

I filmed its geeks tinkering, hidden in forest huts, their first makeshift drones. For another film, the drone battalions of Lyman and Kupiansk closed the sky in place of their overly timid allies. This winter, in Pokrovsk and Sumy, high-tech command rooms where battles were fought at a distance. I even heard—at the time without fully understanding—Mr. Zelensky announcing that his engineers were developing a new generation of drones capable of striking Russia up to the Arctic.

Continue reading.