Donald Trump thought Ukraine’s surprise drone attack on Russia over the weekend was “bad-ss,” according to a White House source.
Ukraine carried out simultaneous attacks on five Russian airbases on Sunday with an army of drones that had been secretly stashed throughout the country for months, reportedly wiping out 40 strategic bombers and racking up an estimated $7 billion in damages.
President Trump was deliberately left in the dark about the attack until it had already happened, but privately told aides he was impressed by the Ukrainians’ tenacity.
“He thought it was bad-ss,” a presidential aide told Axios following the strike. “Pretty strong,” he remarked to another confidant.
Another advisor told the outlet: “From an international perspective, you’ve got a chihuahua inflicting some real damage on a much bigger dog.”
Operation Spider-Web, as it was known, reportedly took 18 months to plan and was personally overseen by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, serving in part as a rebuttal that his country had no “cards” to play in their war against Russia.
Trump had an hour-long phone call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in which the Russian president warned him “very strongly” that his forces “will have to respond” to the humiliation inflicted upon them by Ukraine.
“It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace,” Trump wrote.
“We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides...President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” he added in a post on Truth Social.
Putin’s advisor Yuri Ushakov later confirmed to Kremlin media that Trump had told the Russian president he had not been informed of the drone attack by Ukraine before it happened.
Both Operation Spider-Web and a similarly massive drone attack on Ukraine by Russia took place the weekend before the two countries met in Istanbul on Monday to engage in ceasefire talks, during which no progress was made.
Trump, who reportedly wishes to broker peace so that he can win a Nobel Prize, said he was concerned that Ukraine’s surprise attack could further prolong the conflict.
“The drone attack didn’t surprise him, because this is what happens when the war continues, but he is concerned that it will prolong the fighting. He wants the fighting to stop, so it disappoints him whenever there is an attack like that,” a White House source told Axios.
Putin meanwhile, said the drone attacks are proof that Kyiv is “degenerating into a terrorist organisation, and its sponsors are becoming accomplices of terrorists,” during a televised meeting with officials on Wednesday.
“The current Kyiv regime does not need peace at all,” he added. “What is there to talk about? How can we negotiate with those who rely on terror?”
The Russian president also rejected the idea of a full ceasefire in Ukraine, claiming Kyiv would use the pause in fighting to regroup and rearm themselves.
Zelensky also criticized Putin’s suggestion of a brief, 2-3 day ceasefire in order to allow both sides to retrieve the bodies of the dead.
“They just don’t see a ceasefire as such at the moment,” the Kyiv Independent reported. “I think they’re idiots, because, fundamentally, a ceasefire is meant so that there are no dead.”
“You can see their attitude. For them, this is just a brief pause in the war,” he added.
“That’s why we really want our American partners to push a sanctions package through the Senate with decisive steps—to pressure the Russians into a ceasefire with strong sanctions. They don’t understand any other way for now.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
