In an evening address on Sept. 1, Volodymyr Zelensky warned airlines, insurance companies, and diplomats that Russian airspace is no longer safe due to the threat of Ukrainian drones.
Zelensky stated:
“Today we want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who is still using key Russian airports: Russian skies are becoming completely unsafe. Ukraine is not threatening civil aviation as such — not a single civilian aircraft. It’s simply that there will be drones in Russia’s skies, and that fact has to be reckoned with. Even though Russian authorities are not reporting this properly, Russian skies will de facto be closing: the war Russia started is closing the country’s own sky.”
According to Zelensky, Kyiv does not intend to cause civilian deaths, which is why it is issuing warnings in advance that there are no longer any safe “windows” in Russian airspace. Zelensky urged ambassadors working in Ukraine and in Moscow to take note of his warning and inform their capitals, and the same warning applied to carriers that fly to airports in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other key Russian destinations. The Ukrainian president added that his country’s Foreign Ministry and competent authorities are willing to provide international bodies with complete data on the threats while stressing that civil aviation cannot safely fly under the circumstances.
In August, The Atlantic described a proposed Ukrainian plan to paralyze Moscow’s aviation hub. Citing two sources, the outlet reported that earlier in the year Zelensky was offered an operation, codenamed M&Ms, which involved using up to 1,000 inexpensive, identical AI-guided drones to overwhelm Russian air defenses in a single night and shut down the skies over Moscow to international flights for an extended period. The idea was to cut off links between the Russian elite and the outside world by making it impossible for them to fly to Istanbul and Dubai. The proposed aim was to push the Kremlin toward negotiations to end its ongoing war. According to The Atlantic, Zelensky feared that a Ukrainian strike on a civilian airliner inside Russia would be seen as “piracy,” but he authorized preparations for the operation. However, implementation came to a halt in July with the dismissal of the operation’s architect, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
Still, Ukrainian drone attacks continue to paralyze Russian airports on a regular basis. According to aviation authorities, airports across the country suspended operations 114 times from June 28 to July 28, with at least 17 of those episodes occurring at Moscow’s four airports. The Association of Tour Operators counted more than 290 cases in the first quarter of 2026. The so-called “carpet” flight restriction regime typically lasts several hours before services resume. Last week, the Russian military reported shooting down 791 Ukrainian drones in a single night — according to Moscow’s mayor, more than 600 of them were headed toward the capital region.
