For months, drone strikes by Ukraine have forced the suspension of flights to and from airports in Russia. Moscow's Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Zhukovsky and Vnukovo airports have had to shut down operations almost daily in October, according to reports from the independent investigative media outlet Agentstvo. On some days, the airports were reportedly closed for up to nine hours.
In early September, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine would seek to cut off the airspace around Moscow and other destinations in Russia. "Today, we would like to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who continues to use major Russian airports: Russian airspace will become completely unsafe," Zelenskyy said. The following day, Ukraine sent a corresponding warning to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Ukraine's airspace has been closed since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Russia's aviation authority, Rosaviatsiya, has issued an emergency safety "carpet" protocol that is designed to immediately shut down the airspace over a specific region or around affected airports if an aircraft violates Russian airspace, weapons are used, or unidentified objects appear in the skies. Once the protocol is announced, drastic restrictions apply to all air traffic.
"If there is a military threat, a specific section of airspace is closed off, and this carpet is declared," Oleksandr Laneckij, the chief executive officer of the Friendly Avia Support consultancy, told DW. "Essentially, every drone poses a military threat." Laneckij noted that Yemen's Houthis have managed to significantly disrupt Saudi airspace. "I think Ukraine's military capabilities far exceed those of the Houthis," Laneckij said.
The military analyst Jan Matvejev also said Ukraine would have little trouble severely disrupting Moscow-area air traffic. Though Ukraine has not yet managed to completely shut down Russian airspace as Zelenskyy plans, Matvejev said, its armed forces "remain committed to this idea." "To close off the airspace and trigger the 'carpet' plan, all you need are simple drones that don't have to be equipped with a warhead or even have a long range," Matvejev said. Ukraine's arms industry can produce hundreds of combat-ready long-range drones in a day, he added.
That is why he believes Ukraine could have the necessary resources to shut down Moscow's airports. Indeed, Ukraine's efforts to shut down Russian airspace are "just getting started," Simon Shuster wrote in October in the US magazine The Atlantic, citing well-informed sources. Matvejev said Russia's air-defense systems were not entirely effective in efforts to prevent Ukrainian drones from penetrating Moscow's airspace.
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