June 2, 2025
Ukraine’s stunningly successful, sudden, and inventive Operation Cobweb, which targeted Russian strategic bombers on June 1, has prompted comparisons in Western media to Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. But many leading analysts and journalists argue that the analogy doesn’t hold.
Spiegel titled its coverage “Putin’s Pearl Harbor?” and noted that “Ukraine destroyed dozens of Russian strategic bombers in a spectacular drone attack,” asking whether the covert strike might shift the course of the war.
More than 80 years ago, the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on U.S. naval and air bases at Pearl Harbor on Oahu caught America off guard and marked the beginning of the Pacific War. That surprise strike prompted the United States to enter World War II, resulting in the destruction or damage of multiple battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and nearly 400 aircraft.
But Peter Dickinson, editor and fellow at the Atlantic Council, says comparing Ukraine’s Cobweb operation to Pearl Harbor is misguided.
Some say today’s Ukrainian drone attacks are Russia’s Pearl Harbor. This is wrong. Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack that started a war. Today’s strikes come after more than three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. A more apt comparison would be with the 1905 Battle of Tsushima, when Japan sank the Russian imperial fleet. Much like today’s war, the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War began because Russia expected an easy victory against an opponent it considered primitive and inferior in every way. The Russians fatally underestimated the Japanese, just as they have underestimated the Ukrainians to their great and mounting cost.
“This is wrong,” Dickinson said. “Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack that started a war. Today’s strikes come after more than three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion.” He argued a more fitting historical parallel is the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, when Japan decimated Russia’s imperial fleet in a shock victory.
“A more apt comparison would be with the 1905 Battle of Tsushima, when Japan sank the Russian imperial fleet. Much like today’s war, the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War began because Russia expected an easy victory against an opponent it considered primitive and inferior in every way,” Dickinson noted. “The Russians fatally underestimated the Japanese, just as they have underestimated the Ukrainians to their great and mounting cost.”
The Washington Post columnist and military historian Max Boot echoed this view in a piece titled “Ukraine just rewrote the rules of war.”
He acknowledged that Japan’s 1941 attack did, in fact, rewrite military doctrine: “Almost no one imagined Japanese forces could cross the entire Pacific undetected and strike what American strategists considered an ‘impregnable fortress.’ But they did.” That attack, launched from six aircraft carriers, damaged or destroyed 328 U.S. aircraft and 19 Navy ships, including eight battleships, and marked the rise of the aircraft carrier as the dominant force in naval warfare.
But, Boot wrote, on June 1, “it was Ukrainians who once again rewrote the rules of war,” noting that Russia’s top brass was likely “just as stunned” as the Americans were in 1941 when Ukrainian drones hit five Russian airbases—two located thousands of miles away in the Arctic and Siberia.
“It’s no surprise Russian military bloggers rushed to compare the Sunday attack to Pearl Harbor,” Boot added. “But that analogy is flawed. While Pearl Harbor signaled the start of a war, Ukraine’s drone strikes are a desperate act of self-defense in a war launched by Vladimir Putin in 2022.”
Boot and Dickinson agree the only valid parallel is technological: both attacks exposed the obsolescence of once-dominant military systems—battleships in 1941, and manned strategic bombers today.
“A swarm of Ukrainian drones, likely costing tens of thousands of dollars, may have inflicted up to $2 billion in damage on Russia’s most advanced aircraft,” Dickinson wrote.
Ukrainian writer, translator, and soldier Ostap Ukrainets also urged Ukrainian media and the public not to use Pearl Harbor as a comparison.
“Japan struck without warning. We’re in a state of war,” Ukrainets said. “Russians are pushing this Pearl Harbor narrative because it’s less humiliating for them and resonates emotionally with Americans—who they’re now rushing to for sympathy. If you must compare it to something, compare it to Tsushima—a historical trauma Russians hate to remember.”
He called Operation Cobweb “the Tsushima of Russian aviation.”
The Battle of Tsushima, fought on May 27–28, 1905, near Japan, was the decisive naval clash of the Russo-Japanese War. Admiral Togo Heihachiro destroyed two-thirds of Russia’s Second Pacific Squadron, commanded by Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky. It was the largest naval battle since Trafalgar, accelerating revolutionary unrest and the decline of the Russian monarchy. Almost the entire Russian fleet, including its flagship, the Knyaz Suvorov, was sunk.
I fully agree that the Pearl Harbor analogy is wrong. The Battle of Tsushima fits much better.
“Much like today’s war, the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War began because Russia expected an easy victory against an opponent it considered primitive and inferior in every way,”
The roaches always have been arrogant and aggressive … and stupid.
Then the useful idiots in the US, like Alex Jones claim that it must have been a NATO operation, totally disregarding the fact that if NATO had been involved, so would the US.
NATO being involved is a joke. They have to grow some balls first. Then, there are many other things that must follow before they could even start with the planning stage.
“Russians are pushing this Pearl Harbor narrative because it’s less humiliating for them and resonates emotionally with Americans—who they’re now rushing to for sympathy. If you must compare it to something, compare it to Tsushima—a historical trauma Russians hate to remember.”
100% true, except the US was not at war, and Japan didn’t destroy planes 4000km behind enemy lines. I doubt any other nation in history has ever destroyed military equipment located so deep into enemy territory.