➡ Dr. Steve Turley talks about how on June 1, 2025, Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale drone attack on multiple Russian air bases, destroying or damaging at least 41 military aircraft and causing around $7 billion in damages. This attack, known as Operation Spiderweb, was planned over a year and a half and involved smuggling 117 drones into Russia. The attack happened just hours before peace talks were set to resume, leading to questions about the timing and the role of Senator Lindsey Graham, who had visited Ukraine to advocate for new U.S. sanctions against Russia. Despite the attack, peace talks in Istanbul continued, with Ukraine insisting on no restrictions on their military capabilities and rejecting any recognition of Russian claims over occupied territories.

The drone’s eye view of a Russian airfield, where bomber after bomber is blown up, more than 40 reportedly destroyed, including nuclear-capable long-range aircraft in one of the most daring attacks of the war. Dubbed Operation Spiderweb and in the works for more than a year and a half, dozens of drones rigged with explosives were hidden in the roofs of these empty containers, placed on trucks and smuggled to the perimeter of Russian air bases. Remotely opened and launched, Russia confirmed military airfield across five regions were attacked. No casualties were reported. But also earlier today, in regions bordering Ukraine, two Russian bridges collapsed, derailing trains, killing at least seven.

The call is unclear. It’s being called Russia’s Pearl Harbor. On June 1, 2025, Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale and coordinated drone strike targeting multiple Russian air bases deep within Russian territory, 2,500 miles from the front line. So as you saw there, the operation, reportedly overseen by President Zelensky and planned over a year and a half, involved smuggling 117 drones inside Russia, concealed in trucks. And these drones were then launched from the trucks parked near the targeted airfields. According to Ukraine’s security service, the strikes destroyed or damaged at least 41 Russian military aircraft, including strategic bombers and an A-50 early warning plane, which are crucial to Russia’s long-range missile assault capabilities.

Ukrainian officials estimate the financial damage to Russia to be around $7 billion, and they claimed that 34% of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carrier fleet was destroyed. Now, ironically, this attack occurred literally just hours before the latest round of peace talks were scheduled to resume. As those drones were obliterating Russian military aircraft, delegations from both countries were arriving in Istanbul, Turkey, for a second round of direct negotiations aimed at ending this war. So why on earth, in the midst of these negotiations, would we be seeing the single most significant escalation in this conflict from Ukraine? Well, many are pointing the finger at this man, Senator Lindsey Graham.

Literally just hours before the attack, Senator Graham visited Ukraine alongside Senator Richard Blumenthal to meet with President Zelensky, and the stated purpose of their visit was to advocate for new sweeping U.S. sanctions against Russia in response to its ongoing war in Ukraine, the senators toward neighborhoods in Kiev that had been recently devastated by Russian attacks, which they described as among the most severe since the full-scale invasion began. Now, of course, such advocacy hardly requires a personal visit to Ukraine on Graham’s part. He’s consistently been a relentless war hawk against Russia for years.

Now, for example, here’s Graham with the late John McCain back in 2016. We’re going to go back and tell our colleagues what Russia’s up to and the politics, what they’re doing in the Ukraine. We’re going to get briefed about Georgia. We hope to make 2017 a year of offense. We believe that Putin has hacked into our elections in America, that he’s trying to undermine democracy all over the world. And it’s time for new sanctions to hit him hard as an individual, his energy sector, his banking sector. It is time to push back against Putin, but be a better friend to our allies over here, including Georgia.

And of course, who could ever forget this? Now, in fairness to Lindsey Graham, this operation obviously took a lot of planning. So this has been in the works now on the part of the Ukrainians for the last several months. But it defies credulity to think that Graham didn’t have at least some part to play in this massive escalation, given his highly public adversarial stance against Russia, which, of course, then begs the question, why now? Why in the midst of these Istanbul negotiations would Graham be advocating a military escalation? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.

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That’s GetLiverHelp.com slash Turley. Take the first step toward better liver health and more vibrant living today. As delegations arrive in Istanbul for their second round of peace talks, what has thus far been clear is that the Ukrainian delegation appears to be uninterested in good faith negotiations, and that’s because they’re insisting on no restrictions whatsoever in their military capabilities, which of course means the continued funding and arming from NATO, and the delegation rejects any recognition of Russian claims over the occupied territories, about 20% of Ukraine. So this would, of course, would be the Donbas region, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozha, Kharsan, and of course Crimea, which Russia annexed back in 2014.

Russia, for its part, has made it absolutely clear that those territories are permanently gone from Ukraine. That’s a non-negotiable, it’s not even within the realm of consideration, as well as any and all future militarization in NATO involvement in Ukraine, as far as Russia is concerned. That is why they launched the special military operation back in February of 2022 in the first place. The fundamental problem for Ukraine, as President Trump made it absolutely clear to Zelensky in the Oval Office, is they got no cards. They have no negotiation leverage whatsoever over Russia.

Russian forces have amassed the most fortified front lines protecting their territorial gains. They’re not going anywhere, and NATO can keep arming Ukraine until it’s blue in the face. Eventually, they’re going to run out of men. This is the whole point of Russia’s war of attrition. They make their territorial gains, they fortify the front, and then they turn it basically into a meat grinder for Ukrainian forces and their futile attempts at pushing Russian forces back. That’s in effect what has been happening over the last year and a half. The Russian front lines have become one big, massive killing machine that patiently waits for Ukraine to deplete enough of its forces before cry his uncle.

That is the reality of the battlefield, for right or for wrong. I’m being purely descriptive, not prescriptive here. To make matters even worse, the entire international infrastructure that has thus far supported Ukraine is collapsing. Of course, President Trump halted US military aid to Ukraine after that contentious meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the part restored in order to try to force Russia to the negotiation table. Trump is made absolutely clear he’s got no interest in the liberal international order at all. He has no interest in a confrontational and aggressive posture towards Russia.

He’s called NATO obsolete. He’s fast dismantling the structures and institutions that comprise the liberal international order that’s been weaponized against Russia, particularly in terms of economic sanctions. So the whole structure, the whole edifice of the international opposition to Russia is quickly being dismantled in the face of Ukraine holding no cards. So then, what are these neocon warmongers like Lindsey Graham to do? Well, unfortunately, I think the answer is rather simple. They need to change the game. They need to give Ukraine some cards and they need to reawaken the international complex that is thus far resisted and sanctioned Russia.

And so, in the end, what’s the only way they’re able to do that? It’s by provoking Russia intentionally to attack NATO. As I see it, that’s the only option they have. What we just saw over the weekend with Ukraine’s escalation was a deliberate attempt to try to get Russia to attack NATO forces. We’re obviously in a proxy war as we speak. These are NATO weapons and NATO technologies and NATO intelligence that are being used to attack Russia. Russia’s Pearl Harbor was in effect a proxy NATO attack and that was deliberate so as to entice and lure Russia into a trap to strike NATO targets and thus trigger Article 5, which would unleash a full-blown war between Russia and NATO member nations.

So, Keir Starmer is already saying that British forces are in their highest alert ever, ready for whatever Russia is preparing with their retaliation. It’s so ironic how Keir Starmer refuses to protect Britain’s own borders from mass invasion but has no problem amassing his soldiers to protect Ukraine. But that’s why I was very glad to see that Secretary of State Marco Rubio assured Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the Trump White House did not have anything to do with this. They had no involvement whatsoever in this Ukrainian drone operation. It happened without their knowledge, without their consent, and at the very least that was a clear sign that the Trump administration was diplomatically distancing itself from this escalation.

If that is the case, I fully expect a massive, and I think everyone expects, I mean a massive Russian retaliation. But, without Putin falling for the trap that Zelensky and I think Lindsey Graham have laid out before him, Putin will stay the course, he will stay as disciplined as he’s been since February of 2022, and he will use this as an opportunity to continue to occupy more Ukrainian territory and leave whatever is left of Ukraine in the proverbial dust, as it were. As I’ve said repeatedly on this channel, for, right, or wrong, Putin is going to get what he wants from this.

This conflict ends, again I’m being purely concerned about Putin’s terms, and no one else’s. He has all the cards. And I don’t think he’s going to give any of them away by attacking NATO targets. In the end, Zelensky may have thought he secured a major victory in this attack, but in the end, that battle won will mean that the war was all the more lost. Hey there, Turley Talk. You know what? I’d love to hear from you. That’s why I’m launching the Dr. Steve hotline, where you can call in, leave a question, and maybe even hear your own voice featured on an upcoming episode of the show.

Whether it’s about the latest political shake-up, or cultural trends, or how we keep pushing forward in this new conservative age, I want to know what’s on your mind. Call me at 717-844-5984. Just leave your question. I’ll be checking in every single week to answer as many as I can. Again, that’s 717-844-5984. Your chance to be a part of the conversation. One more time, 717-844-5984. Give me a call, and let’s talk. [tr:trw].

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