Neither President Franklin Delano Roosevelt nor British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, nor any of their senior military or political advisors, saw the Japanese attacks of late 1941 coming. The forces of Imperial Japan achieved total surprise across the Pacific. The intelligence failures in the U.S. leading up to Pearl Harbor were catastrophic. So was Great Britain's general underestimation of the threat from Imperial Japan. The U.K.'s fortress outpost in the Pacific at Singapore was thought to be, if not impregnable, than as close to it as possible.

Russia's increased sense of vulnerability may be the most important result of a recent large-scale Ukrainian drone attack named Operation Spiderweb, experts tell Al Jazeera. The operation destroyed as much as a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet on the tarmac of four airfields deep inside Russia on June 1. Days later, Russia started to build shelters for its bombers and relocate them. An open source intelligence (OSINT) researcher nicknamed Def Mon posted time-lapse satellite photographs on social media showing major excavations at the Kirovskoe airfield in annexed Crimea as well as in Sevastopol, Gvardiyskoye and Saki, where Russia was constructing shelters for military aircraft. They reported similar work at several airbases in Russia, including the Engels base, which was targeted in Ukraine's attacks on June 1.

With Operation Spider's Web, Ukraine inflicted the worst attack on Russian air power since World War II. The final damage is yet to be determined, but one tally is nine Tu-95s and three Tu-22M3 bombers gone, along with an A-50 "Mainstay" radar plane and an unlucky An-22 transport plane. Whatever the final count, the strategic impact is clear. Never before have drones taken out a big chunk of a nuclear-capable bomber force. Unlike tanks, Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot replace his bombers because none are still in production.

Ukraine has destroyed Russian strategic bombers in an unprecedented undercover drone operation while Russia launched its biggest-yet air raid on Ukraine's cities and intensified attacks on its northern region of Sumy, when the two sides met for peace talks in Istanbul. The two respective drone operations were emblematic of how direct peace talks, which began on May 15, have not abated the intensity of the conflict and may have deepened it. Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly pledged a response. Russia's drone-and-missile attack on Saturday night involved 472 Shahed kamikaze drones, four cruise missiles and three ballistic missiles. Ukraine neutralised 385 aerial targets, its air force said, including three of the cruise missiles.

Ukrainian drones struck multiple military airbases deep inside Russia on Sunday in a major operation a day before the neighbours held peace talks in Istanbul. The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions, causing several aircraft to catch fire. The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all but two regions – Murmansk and Irkutsk, the ministry said. "In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire," the Defence Ministry said.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Any description of Ukraine's attacks on Russia's fleet of strategic bombers could leave one scrambling for superlatives. Forty-one planes – including supersonic Tu-22M long-range bombers, Tu-95 flying fortresses and A-50 early warning warplanes – were hit and damaged on Sunday on four airfields, including ones in the Arctic and Siberia, Ukrainian authorities and intelligence said. Moscow did not comment on the damage to the planes but confirmed that the airfields were hit by "Ukrainian terrorist attacks". Videos posted by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), which planned and carried out the operation, which was called The Spiderweb, showed only a handful of planes being hit. The strategic bombers have been used to launch ballistic and cruise missiles from Russian airspace to hit targets across Ukraine, causing wide scale damage and casualties.

Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy questions President Donald Trump about the Russia-Ukraine war. The brazen Ukrainian blitz of Russian warplanes Sunday was 18 months in the making and the Pentagon was kept in the dark until it was over, sources told Fox News. "Operation Spider's Web," a series of coordinated drone strikes penetrating deep into Russian territory, is believed to have taken out dozens of Russia's most powerful bomber jets and surveillance planes as they sat idle on five military airfields. The stunning operation was personally overseen by President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's security service (SBU) said. Ukraine used small FPV drones hidden inside wooden cabins mounted on trucks.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities reported a massive overnight drone and missile attack on its territory. All this comes as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are heading to Istanbul, Turkey, for a second round of peace talks on Monday. Expectations are low, as the two warring sides remain far apart on how to end the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014.

Officials say multiple military airbases have come under drone attacks in Russia in a major operation taking place ahead of peace talks with Ukraine due to start in Istanbul on Monday. The Russian Defence Ministry said that Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday, causing several aircraft to catch fire. The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all but two regions – Murmansk and Irkutsk, the ministry said. "In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire," the ministry said.

Ukraine claims to have left more than 40 Russian bomber planes "burning" in a large scale drone attack" in the Murmansk region. The footage appears to show Russian warplanes on a runway being struck and bursting into flames. Sources from Ukraine's security service, SBU, told the BBC "enemy strategic bombers are burning en masse in Russia". They also said Ukraine was conducting "a large-scale special operation aimed at destroying enemy bomber aircraft," according to a statement sent from sources within the service to BBC Ukraine.