In the summer of 2025, Ukraine launched Operation Spiderweb.
The remarkable drone strikes that resulted shook Russia to its core and showcased that the war that Russia started with Ukraine was coming home to roost.
What we didn’t know at the time was that Operation Spiderweb was just the start.
Something much bigger was coming.
In fact, it happened both before and after Operation Spiderweb, only Ukraine kept it all hush-hush.
Ukraine activated a top-secret operation.
A Spiderweb 2.
0 that left Russia’s equipment all over Ukraine burning as the rage of Ukraine’s machines hit hard.
Now, we have all of the details.
We’ll start with the headline statistic: Over 1,000 Russian artillery systems and armored vehicles have been destroyed in a secret operation that Ukraine has named Operation Ashan.
This two-phase campaign has completely devastated Russia, both on the front lines and the rear, and nobody even knew that it was happening until Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, revealed its existence during the June 30 Brave1 Advantage event.
“The concept was to use specially developed bomber drones supported by effective reconnaissance.
This allowed us to locate and strike tanks, armored personnel carriers, other armored vehicles, and artillery.
In just a few nights, more than 800 pieces of enemy equipment were destroyed.
After that, the Russians did not carry out a single mechanized offensive for six months,” Fedorov declared when speaking of a campaign that saw Ukraine take repeated aim at Russian assets located over 50 kilometers beyond the front lines.
This is insane.
So much of the focus of Ukraine’s mid-range strike campaign has been placed on the havoc that it has wreaked on Russian logistics, along with the isolation of Crimea that is resulting.
But while all of this has been happening, Ukraine has been running a separate operation right under our noses that may well be just as devastating to Putin’s ambitions as the Logistical Lockdown that is loosening his grip over Crimea.
Here’s what we know so far.
Operation Ashan was a two-phase operation, with the first phase covering what Fedorov details in his quote.
That phase was sparked by Ukraine’s drone innovations.
Special drones had been developed, Ukraine’s Defense Minister claims, and they, along with Ukraine’s reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering, made it possible to strike more than 800 targets.
This was an operation that was weeks, if not months, in the making, and it was all made possible by Ukraine’s brilliant Delta system.
That system, which was deployed across all levels of Ukraine’s Defense Forces back in August 2025, provides Ukraine with real-time battlefield awareness.
Whenever a drone records footage or takes photographs of a Russian position, that data is uploaded to Delta.
The same goes for reports from troops on the ground or any other information that is gathered by Ukraine.
It all goes into this centralized repository, making possible the sorts of coordinated strikes that were key to the success of Operation Ashan.
During the first phase, Ukraine mapped out the positions of Russian tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, and personnel carriers.
Then, Ukraine struck.
The 800 or so artillery units and armored vehicles that Ukraine destroyed were all taken out over the course of a handful of nights, Fedorov reports.
And they led to Russia being unable to launch a single mechanized offensive for the six months that followed.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister says that the impact on the battlefield was clear.
Russia had intended to launch a mechanized assault against Ukraine in May 2025, he claims.
That assault wasn’t carried out until October, and it’s all due to the first phase of Operation Ashan.
This casts a whole new light on what we saw during the summer and early fall of 2025.
You may remember that reports dating back as far as September were claiming that Russia was unable to launch mechanized assaults.
Russia has also switched to an infiltration strategy during the latter half of 2025, with which it was sneaking units with as few as two soldiers into Ukrainian territory rather than launching armored assaults.
At the time, this was seen as a dangerous new strategy being carried out by Russia.
Now, we know the truth.
The initial phase of Operation Ashan had left Putin with no choice but to rely on the infiltrators.
United24 Media provides a little more information about this first phase.
It says that the operation actually wound up with Ukraine having struck 949 targets, all located more than 50 kilometers beyond the front lines.
It seems that the 800 or so that Fedorov claims were the assets that Ukraine destroyed, leaving about 150 targets that were hit without being taken out.
Thanks to United24 Media, we also know that Ukraine’s Lazar and Nemesis units were involved in the operation.
Both are among the most skilled and notorious of all of Ukraine’s drone units.
The Lazar Group, in particular, has helped to lay the foundations for Ukraine’s drone-heavy strategy from the very beginning of Putin’s invasion, and is responsible for destroying more than $13 billion worth of Russian equipment.
The man behind it, Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, is now Ukraine’s Deputy Air Force Commander, and is spearheading the development of Ukraine’s anti-drone shield, which it hopes will protect it against Russia’s long-range drone strikes.
But by now, you may be wondering something.
At the start of this video, we told you that Ukraine had destroyed more than 1,000 armored vehicles and artillery systems.
But so far, we’ve repeated the number 800.
Even the 949 targets that United24 Media claims don’t quite measure up.
Welcome to Phase Two of Operation Ashan – the exclamation point on a devastating assault against Russia’s offensive power that bumped the numbers up to quadruple digits.
The first phase of Ukraine’s devastating operation appears to have been carried out at some point during the first half of 2025, though Fedorov provides no specifics beyond noting that it impacted Russia’s plans for May 2025.
But we know a lot more about the second phase, starting with
when it began.
June 2026 was when Ukraine launched Phase Two of Operation Ashan.
And this time, it took a more strategic approach to the targets that it picked off.
United24 Media reports that Ukraine focused the second phase on artillery systems, and it attacked in four key regions of Ukraine, all of which are dealing with Russia’s attempts to advance on the ground.
Those regions were Donetsk, Kherson, Starobilsk, and Zaporizhzhia, and all Russian positions in those regions experienced a firestorm of Ukrainian drones that had the singular purpose of taking out as much artillery as possible.
They were successful.
By the end of Phase Two of Operation Ashan, Ukraine had hit another 231 targets, and confirmed 171 of those targets were destroyed.
A combination of intercepted Russian communications and objective control footage that was inevitably uploaded onto Delta confirmed the outcome.
And within the first day of Phase Two, the impact was already being felt.
Russian activity across multiple regions of the front dropped by anywhere between 30% and 81%, depending on where Ukraine was measuring.
By the end of Operation Ashan, Ukraine had officially hit 1,180 targets, most of which had been destroyed, United24 Media adds.
So much of what Ukraine has done to defend itself against Russia has been impressive.
However, Operation Ashan has to rank among the most impressive operations that Ukraine has launched yet, and it sits alongside Operation Spiderweb in terms of the coordination and quality of command that was required to pull it off.
Sure,
Spiderweb may be the more headline-grabbing of the two, especially as it involved Ukraine sneaking drones into Russia and taking out some of the most important strategic bombers in Russia’s arsenal.
But when it comes to frontline effectiveness, Operation Ashan has had far more immediate impact on Ukraine’s campaign.
But we’ll get to that.
There’s something else about Operation Ashan that we haven’t mentioned yet.
According to Fedorov, the second phase of the operation saw Ukraine unleash a new type of drone that it designed specifically to destroy Russian artillery barrels.
That’s according to a June 17 report by United24 Media, which quoted Fedorov.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister revealed little about the new type of drone, though he did point out that disabling Russian artillery using standard drone drops is extremely difficult, and often not as effective as Ukraine needs it to be.
Artillery damaged in such a fashion can often be repaired,
Fedorov says, making any benefits from such drone strikes temporary.
To overcome this problem, Ukraine’s engineers came up with a new type of munition for Operation Ashan that not only targets a Russian artillery barrel, but is powerful enough to rupture the barrel to the point where the artillery unit can never be used again.
“A special shell was developed, and after just two nights, 250 units of Russian artillery were destroyed.
There is video confirmation for each case,” is all that Fedorov would say.
Beyond that, we don’t know much about Ukraine’s barrel shredder.
And that’s probably for the best.
The less that Ukraine says about its new munition, the higher the likelihood that it will be able to execute another phase of Operation Ashan in the future without Russia being able to do a thing about it.
That brings us to the big question: Why does Operation Ashan matter? We’ll be answering that question in a moment.
But before we do, this is a quick reminder that you’re watching The Military Show.
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We know what Operation Ashan wasn’t.
Fedorov says that this two-phase, multi-year operation was never about Ukraine going on the offensive.
Rather, it was about stopping Russian offensives in their tracks.
Ukraine used over 1,000 drones during three days of attacks in the initial phase, and it would have used hundreds more in the following one, all to prevent Russia from conducting assaults with anywhere near the ferocity that it would have been able to muster without this operation.
Have any of the counteroffensives that we’ve seen Ukraine launch in 2026 been aided by Operation Ashan and its weakening of Russia’s forces? Perhaps, but that was never the intention.
The main intention was what we just mentioned: Making sure that Russia couldn’t hit Ukraine’s cities and defenses as hard as it wanted.
“Each target hit means less fire on Ukrainian positions and cities,” Ukraine’s military says, adding, “Each such operation weakens the enemy and brings closer the moment when it loses the ability to impose its terms on the battlefield.
” In other words, this was about survivability across both phases.
Russia certainly
isn’t slowing down with its ground assaults, even in the wake of the second phase of Operation Ashan.
As Pravda reported on July 1, the previous 24 hours had seen Russia and Ukraine engage in 256 clashes across the front, with the most intensive of those fights taking place in the Pokrovsk and Sloviansk sectors, both of which are in the Donetsk region that Ukraine targeted in the second phase.
It’s in this high number of clashes that we see the real point of Operation Ashan.
Putin would
order all of these assaults regardless.
It doesn’t matter if his soldiers have armor and artillery or not.
But to Ukraine, it means everything because of how Russia conducts ground warfare.
Artillery, in particular, is central to the Russian way of war.
A lot has been said about the relentless missile and drone assaults that Russia conducts against Ukraine.
But when it comes to Russia making actual advances on the ground, artillery is key.
Russia also uses artillery differently from Western forces, the Royal United Services Institute points out.
Where Western armies typically use artillery to help them maneuver, Russian forces typically conduct maneuvers so they can get into position to bombard defenses with artillery.
This fundamental difference in approach is vital for Ukraine to counter.
To Russia, artillery is the main form of firepower that its forces can bring to the table in close battles over territory.
All of Russia’s combined armed elements are organized around artillery units that are positioned to unleash constant fire against Ukrainian defenses.
Typically, those artillery units will go to the front to offer their firepower during assaults, and will then withdraw to what is supposed to be safe territory.
Ukraine knows this.
And both phases of Operation Ashan were designed to counter the Russian approach.
When Ukraine’s military talks about absorbing less fire from Russian artillery, that has been made possible by the wholesale destruction of that artillery during Operation Ashan.
For Russia, this means assaults aren’t conducted in the way that its entire military is trained to conduct.
Artillery can’t be used to provide sustained fire because it doesn’t exist to be moved into position in the first place.
That leaves assault units to attack much stronger Ukrainian defenses, which are also lethal due to the swarms of drones ahead of them.
And remember, Ukraine also used its brilliant operation to cripple hundreds of armored vehicles.
That leaves Russia’s assault forces unprotected and forced to attack without the backdrop of artillery fire that is supposed to weaken Ukraine’s defenses before Russian troops ever reach them.
The result is inevitable: Russian soldiers die on a scale that they otherwise wouldn’t, and Ukraine’s defenses hold up much longer because they don’t have to sustain the pressure that Russia’s artillery-based strategy is supposed to provide.
And as a nice little coda to this aspect of Operation Ashan, Russia’s artillery losses across the entire war are so vast, with up to 34,000 units having been lost, that it’s having to come up with new assault tactics on the fly.
Russia is now being forced to use drones where it would otherwise have used artillery.
Using FPV drones isn’t new to Russia, of course.
But previously, even those drones acted in a supporting role to artillery.
Now, they have to take center stage.
That could cause problems for Ukraine in the future.
As Russia ramps up its drone production, particularly of the heavy bomber drones that are closest to artillery shells in terms of firepower, it will gain precision that artillery couldn’t offer.
However, Ukraine is a long way ahead of Russia when it comes to drones, and that brings us to the second reason why Operation Ashan is so important: It highlights just how deep Ukraine’s drone advantage is, and has been, for so much of the war.
Practically every target that Ukraine hit during Operation
Ashan was struck by a Ukrainian drone, showcasing how far ahead Ukraine is of Russia when it comes to using its drones for precision strikes.
Russia is only just starting to do the same on the front lines now, and that’s only after Ukraine has caused so much damage to its artillery-based strategy.
But Russia has a long way to go before it can catch up to Ukraine.
Ukraine leads when it comes to numbers and tech.
On June 11, the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, revealed that Ukraine struck almost 180,000 military targets in May, most of which were hit by drones.
Ukrainian FPV drones now outnumber Russian FPV drones by 1.
5 to 1 on the battlefield, and that gap is only getting wider.
The emergence of Ukraine’s mid-range strike drones also means that any future phases of Operation Ashan will see Ukraine striking deeper than ever before.
The first two phases saw Ukraine hit targets over 50 kilometers away from the front.
Now, Ukraine’s mid-range strike drones can travel 200 kilometers or more.
They’re already doing that to shatter Russian logistics in the rear.
If Russia has a mind to withdraw its artillery to this sort of distance, it still won’t be safe.
And that’s the point.
Artillery is already useless at 50 kilometers, never mind 200.
As Ukraine’s drone advantage grows, Russia has to push its artillery even further back, rendering it a non-factor.
Sticking with drones, Ukraine is also a long way ahead of Russia when it comes to drone technology and tactics.
While Russia is struggling to adopt Ukraine’s approach now that it has lost so much artillery, Ukraine is already using drone interceptors to destroy Russian Shahed-types before they’re able to crash down onto cities.
Many of the drones that Ukraine unleashes on the front and in the mid-range now use AI to travel and automatically identify targets.
That capability often takes satellite navigation out of the equation, which also means that Russian electronic warfare systems have no signals to jam.
Russia claims that it’s using AI for similar purposes.
But Ukraine’s results are far more obvious, suggesting that Russia is puffing up its AI capabilities in the face of Ukraine’s drones performing much better.
What Operation Ashan shows us is the true gulf in class that exists on the drone front.
As Ukraine continues to innovate, it’s likely we’ll see a third phase, likely as unannounced as the first two, that Russia won’t be able to stop either.
Who knows? The scope of the next phase could be extended to Russia’s drone operation facilities, thus counteracting Russia’s adaptation to its artillery problems.
What’s clear is that drones have been key to Ukraine reversing the momentum of the war.
Operation Ashan now stands as one of the purest showcases of how that momentum shift has been achieved.
Russia knows that more is coming.
On June 25, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced that he had approved a new 40-day strategic initiative that will be carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine.
The goal of this initiative is to pressure Russia into giving up its war, and it seems likely that pressure will come from more middle and deep strikes.
With the artillery down, Ukraine is now targeting Russian infrastructure and logistics more frequently.
Will a third phase of Operation Ashan happen during these 40 days of pressure? Zelenskyy isn’t saying, and Russia won’t know until it’s happening.
What we do know for sure is that Ukraine raged against Russia’s machines with machines of its own in this secret operation.
And now, so much of what’s been happening in Ukraine since mid-2025 makes a lot more sense.
The drone strike numbers for 2026 alone show how much the momentum shift that Operation Ashan helped to create is affecting Russia.
800,000 verified targets hit and counting.
That’s what Ukraine has to show for the first half of 2026, and it’s all due to the drone advantage we talked about earlier.
You can dig a lot deeper into that advantage if you watch our video.
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