KYIV, Ukraine — As we sped along the highway from Odesa to Kyiv last Sunday, one of the Ukrainian passengers in the car suddenly let out a shout. The car swerved into a roadside gas station where people were glued to their cell phones.

The news had just broken online about Ukraine’s stunning drone assault on four Russian air bases — two of them thousands of miles inside Russia — which destroyed or damaged 40 strategic bombers used to carry cruise and ballistic missile attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure, possibly sidelining one-third of Russia’s fleet.

Snarky memes started pouring onto the messaging app Telegram, ridiculing Vladimir Putin and his hapless air defense system. “The Russian army is now the second best in Europe,” crowed one popular post. Another aimed its dart at President Donald Trump, proclaiming, “You said we had no cards, but we had the wild card.”

This daring act of sabotage, 18 months in the planning, amounts to far more than a desperately needed morale boost for Ukrainians following Trump’s effective defection to Putin’s side.

Operation Spiderweb not only illustrated the brilliance of Ukraine’s technological skills and the flaws of the Russian military, but it put the lie to Trump’s claim that Russia is the war’s inevitable winner (no wonder the president, as of Tuesday, had barely mentioned this stunning attack, and claimed he knew nothing beforehand).

The daring maneuver also demonstrates to the world how the use of drones and unmanned systems — with Ukraine now the global leader through its innovation and battlefield use — have become the new face of modern war.

A year ago, on my last visit to Ukraine, there was a shortage of artillery shells on the eastern front line after the GOP-led U.S. Congress cut military aid for six months. I watched determined soldiers fashion a few homemade shells using 3D printers and scrap metal filled with salvaged and melted explosive material pried from tank mines.

Such units turned, in desperation, to inexpensive first-person view (FPV) drones for surveillance and attack.

Starting with common, cheap Chinese Mavic drones, of the kind that Americans use for weddings and on vacation, frontline units ordered drones or parts on Amazon, or were gifted them by friends, family, and civilian volunteer organizations.

One year later, 80% of frontline “kills” of Russian soldiers and material come from drones carrying varying amounts of explosives and traveling increasingly long distances.

However, Ukrainians remain woefully short of air defenses that can repel cruise and ballistic missiles, especially given the failure of the U.S. and Europe to deliver the U.S. Patriot systems and interceptors that had been promised.

Ukraine begged former President Joe Biden and German leaders to no avail to provide long-range missiles that could hit distant Russian aerodromes and eliminate strategic bombers at the source.

Exploiting this vulnerability, Putin has increased the number of strategic missiles aimed at civilian infrastructure, especially energy systems.

That is what makes Operation Spiderweb such a breathtaking combination of chutzpah and expertise.

Using 117 FPV drones, costing around $2,000 each, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claims to have wiped out $7 billion worth of strategic aircraft — a stunning cost-to-benefit ratio. Moreover, Russia no longer has the technology to make such planes, so they can’t be replaced.

“Not everything can be revealed, but these are Ukrainian actions that will undoubtedly be in history books,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted.

Russian morale also took a hit, as military bloggers bemoaned the careless lack of security and underestimation of Ukrainian secret services.

Although all details are not yet confirmed, the SBU said the drones were smuggled into Russia, then hidden in the roofs of model vacation cabins, which were trucked on platforms to locations near the air bases by unwitting Russian drivers.

Then the roofs of the vacation homes retracted simultaneously by the four major air bases, releasing drones programmed to hit the fuel tanks of the planes, ensuring they would explode. The batteries of the drones were kept charged by putting solar panels on the roofs of the cabins, just above the hidden drones.

This sabotage attack can’t be considered a total game changer since the drones never could have traveled thousands of miles inside Russia without the brilliant truck scheme.

However, as I was told by Sergii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, Operation Spiderweb does reflect a “revolution in warfare because drones can replace the function of every type of equipment we now use for war, on sea, air and land.” And, they can be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of the weapon and manpower they can destroy.

Moreover, Operation Spiderweb, conducted the day before the second round of Trump-driven “peace talks” between Russian and Ukrainian teams, exposed the harsh truth about trying to woo Moscow toward peace by offering concession after concession up front.

Russia has not budged one inch from its demand for total capitulation and subservience from Kyiv, and has only increased its missile barrage on Ukrainian cities. Yet Trump refuses to carry out his threat to impose new sanctions if Putin rejects a ceasefire.

Ukraine demonstrated clearly on Sunday that it won’t play the Kremlin’s cynical game. It will continue to show up for the useless talks to appease Trump, but it will pressure Moscow though Trump does not.

Related Articles

Shadi Bartsch: Committing to the Chicago Principles of free speech is the way forward for higher ed

David M. Drucker: The GOP’s fiscal hawk era is officially over

David Brooks: The Democrats’ problems are bigger than you think

Stephen L. Carter: The Supreme Court got the Environmental Policy Act case right

Thomas Friedman: We are being governed by the Trump Organization Inc.

The day after Spiderweb, the SBU did a follow-up, conducting a third explosive hit on Putin’s favorite Kerch Bridge, which links Crimea to the Russian mainland, hitting underwater supports.

These attacks landed severe psychological blows to Russia that Putin won’t be able to shield the public from. And as I saw firsthand, Operation Spiderweb will bolster the will of hard-pressed Ukrainians to continue their existential fight.

Maria Savianenko, one of the Ukrainians traveling with me on Sunday, gave voice to those feelings: “Drones have changed the war, changed everything. A country without ships drove out the Russian fleet with drones, and without planes, we destroyed their planes. We can’t stop now because it is the only chance in our history to beat the Russians back.”

When she attended the memorial service Wednesday for a friend killed in direct combat on the front, she said that she would consider that every plane destroyed by Operation Spiderweb was “done in his name.”

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com.

I’ve been a faculty member at the University of Chicago for 27 years; for 12 of them, I was married to the university’s late president, Robert J. Zimmer. Bob was well known for his endorsement of the “Chicago Principles” addressing academic free speech, which were formulated by a faculty committee he appointed in 2014.

Now, in 2025, at a time when opposing ideological forces threaten to rip higher education apart altogether, it’s clearer than ever we need to observe these principles if we are to maintain our universities as places for inquiry and learning rather than the nurturing of ideologies.

First of all, let’s be clear. Academic free speech and public free speech are not the same, and the Chicago Principles refer to the former, repeating a view of speech on campus with roots deep in the university’s history. “There is not an institution of learning in the country in which freedom of teaching is more absolutely untrammeled than in the University of Chicago,” remarked university President William Rainey Harper in 1902.

Thirty years later, at a time of tension over a communist speaker on campus, President Robert M. Hutchins wrote that students “should have freedom to discuss any problem that presents itself.”

Today, when being either for or against the position of our national government comes with undue risk and when free speech seems to many to be an insoluble problem, these principles — what they allow and what they do not — offer us simple guidelines as the American university faces two crises, both political in nature.

The first crisis is one of free speech — and free thought — under attack.

Faculty across the country face constraints on the ability to express a liberal opinion on any controversial matter, especially if related to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) or other “woke” topics.

One of my friends from another university worries that despite her U.S. passport (she’s originally Japanese) the ICE men will kidnap her off the street because her work is in gender, disability and health. She doesn’t expect her administration to step in if she’s detained — too many college administrations are primarily worried about losing additional government funding.

My friend is not being paranoid, and that’s pretty terrifying in a country known for tolerance and freedom. Professors and students have been shut down or removed (or have fled the U.S.) for their views. Just think of Rümeysa Öztürk, whose great crime appears to have been co-authoring a pro-Palestinian op-ed for her school newspaper while on a valid F-1 visa.

Never mind the Chicago Principles, ICE’s overreach in her case violates the First Amendment: The government shall not interfere with freedom of expression. Öztürk was not disruptive or violent. She simply published a point of view. Are we willing to let go of this democratic cornerstone that enables public discourse and government accountability? Don’t we want to push back even a little?

The second crisis is arguably one of pushing free speech too far.

Some students and faculty on campuses around the country seem to be confusing vandalism and disruption with the function of learning.

Related Articles

David M. Drucker: The GOP’s fiscal hawk era is officially over

David Brooks: The Democrats’ problems are bigger than you think

Stephen L. Carter: The Supreme Court got the Environmental Policy Act case right

Thomas Friedman: We are being governed by the Trump Organization Inc.

Lisa Jarvis: The MAHA report’s errors are just the start of its problems

Is using a bullhorn an example of academic free speech? If you thereby chill the main function of a university, offering an education, by disrupting classes and students, the Chicago Principles would say it’s not. Nor is taking over a campus quad, vandalizing university property, throwing paint or harassing people you disagree with.

Free speech on campus is enabled by certain limits of time, place and manner that keep it manageable for all. The university “may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment … or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the university.” Without such limits a university will have difficulty following its calling.

If the future of the university itself is now at stake, as so many seem to agree, it would be a good time to reinstate our commitment to these principles. University presidents need not have to decide whether or not to call in the police if tent cities spring up on campus and administrative buildings are taken over. It should never get to that stage in the first place.

Shadi Bartsch is a professor in humanities at the University of Chicago and former director of the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. She wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.

(Courtesy of HarperCollins)

JILLIAN CANTOR: Discusses her book “Beautiful Little Fools,” stories of the women of “The Great Gatsby” in the years leading up to events portrayed in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, part of Friends of the St. Paul Public Library’s yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of “Gatsby.” Free. 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, Riverview Public Library, 1 E. George St., St. Paul.

ARON OLSON: Presents “Crumbling Misplacements,” which celebrates neurodivergent literature, in conversation with Xander Gershberg. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

Related Articles

Highlights from The Associated Press’ interview with Stephen King

Two artists awarded $25K as McKnight Book Artist Fellows

Literary calendar for week of June 1

Literary pick for week of June 1: “Eliza and the Flower Fairies”

Readers and writers: A sobering look at the vanishing prairie

After little more than a year sub-leasing offices on Wabasha Street in downtown St. Paul, FreezPak Logistics needed space to expand its national transportation sales and marketing hub. The New Jersey-based cold storage and food delivery company recently signed a long-term lease at Infor Commons, a 13-story office building on St. Peter Street, for 6,500 square feet near the top level. With buildout near completion, the company’s workspace will soon nearly triple.

“We thought originally we were going to put it in New Jersey,” said Mo Shearer, FreezPak’s senior vice president of transportation. “As we continued to recruit and people applied, we saw more and more applicants from the Twin Cities. Rather than ask them to uproot their families to the East Coast, I moved here from Maryland.”

FreezPak Logistics senior vice-presidents Mat Rasmussen, left, and Mo Shearer in their new office space in the Infor Commons building in downtown St. Paul on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

At the same time, the Jacobson Law Group was looking to relocate its 16 attorneys from the Great Northern Building on Fifth Street in Lowertown but stay in St. Paul. By the end of June, they’ll fill 7,400 square feet at Infor Commons, once known as Lawson Commons. Between them, the two companies are sliding in like Tetris pieces to spaces that had been given up in 2023 by Travelers Insurance, which still occupies multiple floors within the office tower that has finally begun to build back tenancies in the post-pandemic era.

No, Infor Commons isn’t back above 90% occupancy, the kind of numbers it enjoyed before remote work went into full swing in 2020.

Still, “we stabilized and are now growing,” said Jerry Hersman, vice president with Frauenshuh Property Management, who recently renewed a five-year lease with one of his building’s most long-standing tenants, Kincaid’s Fish, Chop and Steakhouse.

Reshuffling

Some may see commercial tenants relocating within downtown St. Paul as “kind of shifting the deck chairs around the Titanic a little bit,” acknowledged Hersman.

Nevertheless, as state government and other employers require more workers to return to job sites in person at least part time, there will be winners and losers downtown, with more reshuffling to come.

While the implosion of Madison Equities, downtown St. Paul’s largest property owner, and the exodus of foot traffic in the era of remote work have indeed cast dark clouds over many of the city’s most iconic buildings, property managers still hope to gain from the consolidation of restaurant, retail and office tenants in key properties, as well as some new arrivals, even as nearby properties decline.

The city of St. Paul has launched a “space use study” that seeks to determine if many of its downtown offices could be consolidated on the ninth floor of the Osborn 370 building on Wabasha Street, which has offered the city an eight-year lease, with the first year being rent-free. Based on the study’s findings, the city could reconfigure existing office space within the City Hall Annex building across the street from City Hall on Fourth Street, or empty the annex building out completely, which could position it for conversion to residences.

At the Great Northern Building, skyways had grown eerily silent and security and maintenance had become “virtually non-existent,” said Jacobson shareholder Joseph Halloran. No one from property management at the Great Northern made an effort to get the firm to stick around at the end of their 10-year lease, he said.

“We were ready to grow this space a while ago, but we weren’t going to do it until we saw an improvement in the environment or the management of the building. That didn’t happen,” said Halloran, who is looking forward to better days ahead at Infor Commons, which sits closer to Rice Park.

A hint of promise

For some industry observers, lateral movement to new locations within the same downtown carries at least a hint of promise. After all, empty offices and retail also mean there’s plenty of room for growth.

“Having one full building and one empty building is a lot better than two half-empty buildings,” said Joe Spencer, president and chief executive officer of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance, a partnership between City Hall and major downtown employers. “That allows the vacant building to transition to housing or other new uses.”

Sherman Associates’ recent conversion of the 25-story Landmark Towers office building on St. Peter Street into luxury housing has already paid off for properties like Infor Commons, which had a tough go of it coming out of the pandemic.

“After right-sizing post-COVID, we dropped down to 70% occupancy, which is our bottom,” Hersman said. Then, about three years ago, Morgan Stanley wealth management and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce exited Landmark Towers, which is now fully residential, and landed at Infor Commons, filling 24,000 square feet between them.

In late May, Hersman was happy to share that he had three more lease renewals under negotiation, as well as a handful of potential new leases in the works. That’s a positive trend in a downtown where a third of office space sits vacant, and as much as 40% of downtown’s competitive office market has been listed for sale, according to the Greater St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association.

“We’re committed to staying here in downtown St. Paul,” said FreezPak’s Shearer. “We’re in a longer lease. I’m coming from the East Coast, and I was pleasantly surprised how much there was to offer in the Twin Cities.”

Related Articles

Your Money: What octogenarians want you to know

Working Strategies: Using AI while maintaining core skills

3 surprising market winners in 2025

St. Paul Corner Drug closing historic soda fountain

Longtime Grand Avenue fabric shop Treadle Yard Goods has closed amid owner’s cancer battle

Alliance Bank Center skyway tenants move to Town Square

Some skyway businesses quickly landed in neighboring buildings after Madison Equities stopped paying utilities at the Alliance Bank Center and the property was condemned by the city. Their experiences have been mixed.

Bilal Saleem, better known as Mr. B, was one of the last tenants to leave the Alliance Bank Center and one of the first to open up shop in a glassy, brightly-lit space between the Town Square food court and the skyway entrance to the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, just above the Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles. As DMV customers come upstairs for a snack, they happen upon his barbershop, which has been a boon for business.

He’s planning a grand opening celebration with food and service discounts from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on June 13.

“I’m happy here. I love it,” said Saleem, who has worked out of at least four locations downtown across some 20 years. “It’s a step above the rest. It’s a stress-free environment.”

Bob Wolf, of Greenwolf Hemp and Organics, and Paul Hartquist Jeweler also landed at Town Square, next to the shuttered skyway entrance to the condemned Alliance Bank Center. Without the building-to-building foot traffic, Wolf noted he’s basically at the end of a dead-end street, which has hurt his business. Hoping to boost his store’s visibility, he hosted a musician for a Jimmy Buffett-style skyway celebration on May 29 and offered free samples of his wares.

“Let people walk through,” said Wolf. “Open up the skyway!”

Even before the death of Madison Equities principal Jim Crockarell last year, major employers like Cray supercomputers, TKDA engineering and Wold Architects had left St. Paul for Bloomington or Minneapolis. Madison Equities has put most of its commercial properties downtown up for sale, and has already lost some buildings to foreclosure. As those buildings empty, there could be at least a small silver lining for some properties around them.

“Obviously, the 1.3 million-square-foot Crockarell portfolio looms large,” said Rhett Carlson, a development associate with Sherman Associates. “If all that was taken offline tomorrow, then yes, that’d zap downtown vacancy and be a boon to the (higher-end) Class A towers.”

He noted, however, that businesses leaving downtown buildings have plenty of options to choose from outside the city, including and beyond Minneapolis, and in the digital era, even outside of physical space.

“The ‘flight to quality’ is the cliche thrown around,” said Carlson, who puts more faith in office-to-residential conversions like Landmark Towers. “The struggle of having a two-‘Central Business District’ metro seems more evident than ever. And law offices don’t have to have physical files in any city.”

It’s clear to commercial brokers and property managers that there are some tough times ahead for downtown. The biggest wild card in some property managers’ eyes? The state of Minnesota.

State workers to return downtown

Gov. Tim Walz called thousands of state employees back to the office at least half time as of June 1, though ongoing pushback from employee unions has led the governor to offer exceptions to those workers who live more than 50 miles away. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter called city government workers back to the office three times per week as of April 1.

Given office consolidations, the return of upwards of 20,000 state employees, which is still opposed by some labor unions, will not be a major benefit for every property the state once occupied. For instance, leases for the state Department of Health expired last year at the Golden Rule Building on Seventh Place, emptying two floors.

Rather than relocate within downtown proper, the offices consolidated in state-owned space within the Freeman Building, which sits inside the Capitol campus on Robert Street, outside of downtown.

As far as state workers returning, “it’s kind of a wild card in that we don’t really know how all of that is going to shake out yet,” said Tina Gassman, president of the Greater St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association. “It can be a boon, but if tenants are moving out of downtown leased space, that helps less so than we would hope.”

Still, some state employees will indeed return to the downtown core. Since 2021, the state has leased approximately 207,000 square feet in the Great Northern Building on Fifth Street, which houses the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, among other state offices.

The St. Paul Port Authority, which owns and operates Treasure Island Center, is looking forward to the return of as many as 250 state employees as Minnesota Housing calls its workers back to the office. Minnesota Hockey, the statewide governing body of amateur hockey, and the two-time PWHL champion Minnesota Frost have also moved into the building.

Commerce is already filling in around them. Afro Deli, which sits across the street, plans to relocate this summer to the Treasure Island Center food counter previously occupied by Slice Pizza, occupying the empty space near Walgreens and the Pillbox Tavern.

“There is a lot of great activity happening at the Treasure Island Center,” said Ashley Aram, a Port Authority spokesperson.

Lowertown blues and revival?

The return of more state workers can’t come soon enough for some downtown business owners. Fed up after examining surveillance video and finding a drug user had repeatedly broken into the Railroader Printing building’s private bathroom, public relations executive Joe Thornton and other employees of Aimclear digital marketing considered a few months ago whether it was time to relocate to the suburbs or go fully remote.

Their perch above the Bulldog restaurant and Mears Park had been good to them over the years. Still, Madison Equities’ vacant Park Square Court building — which adjoins the Railroader Printing building — has fallen into neglect and disrepair, with visible evidence of squatters defecating in a corner.

Then came January. That’s when St. Paul’s Downtown Improvement District expanded into Lowertown, bringing with it street safety and cleaning ambassadors available with a call to a pager to walk workers to their cars or remove blankets, shoes and other detritus abandoned in the skyway. St. Paul police identified the repeat drug user who had broken into the bathroom and convinced him to move along.

Even the Green Line light-rail station near the Union Depot, long a magnet for litter and loitering, has gotten cleaner, as has Mears Park, Thornton said.

Quarterly meetings between downtown businesses and representatives of the mayor’s office have sometimes been tense, but they’ve also led to introductions to the court-appointed receiver now overseeing the Park Square Court building, which has been reassuring, Thornton said.

With those and other improvements in mind, Aimclear made the decision to stay in Lowertown.

Thornton noted downtowns everywhere have been impacted by remote work, the housing crisis, the fentanyl crisis and other pressures.

“We have an almost identical office up in Duluth, and we’ve had many of the same problems,” he said. “We could easily move both offices or go full remote, but … we’re here. We’re going to be sitting above Bulldog for as long as we can see into the foreseeable future.”

Related Articles

St. Paul Corner Drug closing historic soda fountain

Officers in Minneapolis raid wore distinct patches. One was authorized, another wasn’t, feds say.

Longtime Grand Avenue fabric shop Treadle Yard Goods has closed amid owner’s cancer battle

‘We feel relief’: Derrick Thompson found guilty in Minneapolis crash that killed five young women

Minneapolis man sentenced for stabbing, hanging St. Paul woman’s dog after argument