Adding Insult to Injury – Attack of ‘Spider’s Web’ Memes

After the success of Ukraine’s June 1 large-scale drone attack on Russia’s strategic bombers the internet was lit up with humorous images that gave a variety of takes on the operation – please enjoy!

June 2, 2025

A “Spider’s Web” meme based on the famous “F*** you Russian warship” response of Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island were ordered to surrender by the Russian cruiser Moskva on Feb. 24, 2022.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) carried out an extraordinary operation where almost 120 first-person view (FPV) kamikazed drones were smuggled into Russia in trucks from where they attacked five airfields where strategic bombers, surveillance and transportation aircraft were positioned. The operation was personally approved by President Volodymyr Zelensky and directly supervised on the day by the head of the SBU Lt. Gen. Vasyl Malyuk.

The attack on the Belaya, Diaghilev, Olenya and Ivanovo airfields is thought to have destroyed or damaged around 40 key aircraft which, if confirmed, represent around a third of Russia’s Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 strategic bomber fleet at a cost of more than $2 billion (some say as much as $7 billion).

In next to no time the internet was filled with memes celebrating what some said should be known here on in as “Malyuk’s Day.”

There were some obvious themes that celebrated Ukraine’s thinking out of the box that caught the Kremlin unawares the day before the next projected meeting between Russia and Ukraine to talk peace in Istanbul. Some of the internet’s more amusing and thoughtful takes on the operation are shown below.

Ukraine has no cards

Several memes made reference to US President Donald Trump’s February Oval Office jibe directed at Zelensky that “Ukraine doesn’t hold any cards.”

The Washington Post columnist Max Boot said that the world’s armies would now be forced to urgently invest in defense against drones before adding: “Zelensky just played his [Trump] card – Ukrainian ingenuity.”

The Trojan horse

Unsurprisingly many posts compared trucks delivering hidden FPV drones with the legend of how the Greeks infiltrated the city of Troy inside the gift of a wooden horse.

It’s Malyuk Day!”

Lt. Gen Malyuk featured in several memes, often metaphorically (and in one instance literally) giving Putin the finger.

The role of trucks

The trucks that were used to smuggle the Ukrainian FPV kamikaze drones into Russia and to transport them close to the target airfields are also widely referenced in memes, even the Ukrainian private postal service “Nova Poshta” featured.

Ukrainian legend – Princess Olga of Kievan Rus’

In 968 AD after the Drevilians, a neighboring tribe killed her husband, Olga got her revenge by returning hordes of her enemy’s carrier pigeons to which sulfur wrapped in canvas was strapped to their legs which ignited and burnt down the city on their return to their customary pigeon lofts.

The might of the Ukrainian Cossack

Much Ukrainian historical literature and fiction majors on the fearsome reputation of the Zaporizhzhia Cossacks such as exemplified in Nikolai Gogol’s tale of Taras Bulba’s campaign against the Polish invaders set in 17th century Ukraine. This meme envisaged a giant version of an archetypal Cossack warrior stomping on Russia’s bomber fleet.