Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Russia may have lost more than 70% of its combat-ready Tu-22M3 supersonic bombers. According to Ukraine’s Defense Express, Moscow entered the war with roughly 33 to 41 mission-capable Backfires from a larger nominal fleet. Today, after 24 airframes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, Russia may retain only nine fully operational aircraft.
The losses follow a consistent pattern of Ukrainian success. Drones struck deep inside Russia at the Dyagilevo, Soltsy, Olenya, and Belaya airbases. During June 2025’s Operation Spiderweb, Ukrainian forces reportedly destroyed or heavily damaged a dozen Tu-22M3s in one coordinated campaign, while satellite imagery confirmed significant damage at several more locations. A Ukrainian S-200 missile shot down one bomber over Russia’s Stavropol region in April 2024. Three more aircraft were lost in training crashes in Russia’s Irkutsk region, most recently on June 15. Russia has built no new Tu-22 variants since 1993 and now faces acute spare-parts shortages, turning even minor damage into permanent losses.
Indeed, this is no marginal development. Ukraine is progressively dismantling one of Russia’s most important conventional strike platforms. Ukraine has forced the Kremlin to spend scarce resources defending bases, repairing irreplaceable aircraft, and explaining losses that expose its supposed aerospace power as hollow.
For the United States and its allies, four lessons stand out.
First, Ukraine has demonstrated that concentrated, high-value air assets are exceptionally vulnerable when an opponent combines inexpensive attritable systems, accurate intelligence, and political will. That vulnerability will shape any future conflict with China over the Taiwan Strait or Iran — again — over the Strait of Hormuz. Hardened shelters, active base defenses, dispersal concepts, and robust counter-drone capabilities must receive higher priority. Western militaries should study Operation Spiderweb with the seriousness once reserved for Desert Storm.
Second, Russia’s long-range bomber fleet is nearing functional collapse. Every additional long-range precision weapon delivered to Ukraine now carries greater strategic weight because remaining high-value targets are fewer, more exposed, and harder to replace. Moscow cannot regenerate this capability on any relevant timeline. That pressure compounds with every Ukrainian strike and every grounded airframe. Washington should stop treating Ukrainian deep strikes primarily as a political risk and recognize them as a core strategic multi-domain lesson.
Third, a Russia stripped of much of its conventional long-range aviation has less ability to distract the West, resupply distant proxies, or project power for clients abroad. This should shape how the U.S. and Europe approach the broader Russia-Iran axis and reassure partners whose prewar assumptions about Russian military power have proven badly inflated.
Fourth, any agreement ending the war must reflect these accumulated Russian losses rather than paper over them. A deal that merely freezes territorial lines would reward aggression and teach revisionist powers that territory can be seized and held when an aggressor is willing to absorb high costs. Ukraine has earned the right to negotiate from a position of strength. The West has the moral responsibility to ensure Kyiv receives the military tools necessary to secure that position.
THE WAR PUTIN PROMISED WOULD NEVER REACH RUSSIA HAS REACHED SIBERIA
Russia’s Backfire fleet is only one component of its strained military, but it remains among the most visible and difficult capabilities to replace. Twenty-four airframes lost. Production lines have been idle for more than three decades. No rapid recovery path exists. Ukraine achieved this degradation without American combat troops or trillion-dollar platforms. It did so through ingenuity, courage, and disciplined use of Western-enabled long-range strike systems.
That is the model the U.S. and its partners should replicate. Treating this success as background noise in a protracted frozen conflict would be a serious strategic error, with consequences far beyond Ukraine.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the IDF special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees, a medical degree, and is completing a Ph.D. in intelligence and global security in the Washington, D.C., area.