The drone strikes on Russian air force bases weaken Moscow’s ability to wage war on its neighbor and undermine its capacity to threaten more distant rivals.

After too many nights of pulling children from the rubble of Russian drone strikes, the weekend’s devastating attacks on Moscow’s military pride mark a brief respite for Ukrainian morale, and yet another twist of the unexpected.

Ukraine says it completed its biggest long-range attack of the war with Russia on Sunday, after using smuggled drones to launch a series of major strikes on at least 40 Russian warplanes at four military bases.

Russia’s Defense Ministry in a statement confirmed the attacks, saying they damaged aircraft and sparked fires on air bases in the Irkutsk region, as well as the Murmansk region in the north. It said strikes were also repelled in the Amur region in Russia’s Far East and in the western regions of Ivanovo and Ryazan, the ministry said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Defense Minister Rustem Umerov would sit down with Russian officials at the second round of peace talks on Monday.

Though the knock-on effects are unclear, some military commentators have called the strike Russia's "Pearl Harbor." Hopes for direct peace talks, which resume Monday, remain low.

The strikes help Kyiv "negotiate from a position of strength," Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told Newsweek.