After Ukraine carried out an extremely effective operation Pavutyna (Eng.: Spiderweb), as a result of which dozens of strategic bombers of the russian occupation army were hit and destroyed, russia decided to rebase one or two of its Tu-160s to the Anadyr strategic aviation base (Ugolny Airport), which is located more than 6,750 km from Ukraine but just about 660 km from the United States of America
It is clear that russia is trying to hide its truly valuable bombers in this way from possible attacks by Ukrainian drones. This could be a really good place to hide these aircraft, because the peculiarity of the Anadyr airbase is that a truck with drones cannot reach it due to the lack of an access road.
Read more: russia Has Over Forty Tu-22M3 Heavy Bombers at Belaya Airbase, Shuffles Tu-95MS and Tu-160s To and Fro (Updated)
The logistics of this air base are provided by air transport and, in some cases, by sea shipping. At the same time, experts estimate that a normal road can be built to this air base no earlier than in 100 years - somewhere by the 30s of the next century.
The AviVector specialized information resource on its account on the social network X (formerly Twitter) published new satellite images indicating that the russians have flown two strategic bombers of the Tu-160 type to this remote air base.
Satellite images of Anadyr Airbase as of June 7, 00:09 UTCThe airbase housed 2 Tu-160 (Blackjack).After Ukrainian strikes on Russian airbases, Russia has dispersed its Tu-160 strategic bombers across multiple locations.One of the Tu-160s from Belaya Airbase arrived at… pic.twitter.com/uvDaBbFyi1— AviVector (@avivector) June 7, 2025
According to Defense Express experts, russia is unlikely to be able to use the Tu-160 from this airbase to strike Ukraine, so the only real reason for such a relocation is simply to hide the planes from possible Ukrainian strikes on them.
It is noted that recently, russians have begun to more actively use this type of aircraft to strike Ukraine. In particular, from 2023 to the beginning of May of this year, only two cases were known when russian strategic Tu-160 bombers were involved in carrying out terrorist attacks on Ukraine. At the same time, since the end of May of this year, the russians have already taken their Tu-160s into the air twice to carry out strikes on Ukraine, in particular on May 25 and June 6 of this year.
At the same time, for the strike on the night of June 6 of this year russia armed Tu-95MS and Tu-160 with nearly full Kh-101 missile load for the first time in 8 months, which is apparently the result of the destruction of a number of russian strategic bombers.
Defense Express reported on how many years and billions russia need to restore Tu-160, Tu-95MSM and Tu-22M3 losses in Ukrainian operation. We also wrote earlier on russian plans for Tu-95MS, Tu-160, and Tu-22M3 modernizations, with numbers and costs.
Read more: First Contact Osa Were the Ukrainian FPV drones that Destroyed russian Tu-95MS, Tu-22M3, and Tu-160 Strategic Bombers
