Plan to ‘stop all takeoffs and landings by detecting drones around the airport’
Putin: “Declaration of terrorism… we will see how we respond”
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Seungwook Kim = The US daily Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 3rd (local time) that Ukraine is expanding drone attacks with a new goal of virtually paralyzing Russian civil aviation.
According to reports, Ukraine is deploying a large number of drones around Russian airports as a means of putting pressure on the Russian economy to end the war.
Ukraine's plan would expand Russia's increasingly frequent temporary airport closures into a de facto complete suspension of air traffic.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on the 1st, "We must take into account the large number of drones that will appear in the skies of Russia," and "I warn all airlines using Russian airspace, all insurance companies and people using Russia's major airports."
Ukraine's position is that it will not directly target passenger planes or civilians. The plan is to continuously deploy drones around the airport to pressure Russia into stopping takeoffs and landings of civil aircraft.
Temporary closures of Russian airports due to Ukrainian drones began in the summer of 2023, the year after the outbreak of the war. The number of closures has steadily increased since then, with a sharp increase in recent months.
Western countries have suspended direct flights to Russia since the start of the war, but airlines from several countries in the Middle East and Asia continue to fly to Russia.
Ukraine has closed its airspace to civil aviation since February 2022, when Russia invaded the country.
Ukraine has rapidly expanded its long-range air warfare targeting Russia in recent months. Hundreds of drones and cruise missiles are mobilized every day to attack oil refineries, military industrial facilities, and commercial warehouses.
Last month, about 16,000 Ukrainian drones crossed the Russian border and entered airspace open to civilian aircraft, a record number.
Last month, 32 Russian airports, including those around Moscow and St. Petersburg, were temporarily closed daily due to drone access.
Aviation experts point out that the scale of Ukraine's drones and the Russian air defense network's busy efforts to shoot them down are posing an increasingly greater risk to civil aviation.
In particular, it is considered a serious problem that the Russian air defense network can confuse civil aircraft in the process of changing the drone's route by sending fake global navigation system (GPS) signals.
Airlines are reducing operations one after another as the possibility of a major accident occurring in Russian airspace increases.
Israeli airline El Al suspended flights between Tel Aviv and Moscow in June due to a Ukrainian drone attack. Last April, Air India changed the route of a route that departed from the United States and passed through Russian airspace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Ukraine's warning a "declaration of terrorism."
“If they actually implement such a plan, we will see how we respond,” Putin told reporters. “We will find appropriate means.”
WSJ reported that Ukraine's drone power is rapidly strengthening, but it is unclear whether the recent trend can lead to a complete closure of Russian airspace.
Ukraine's latest operation is part of a strategy to block Russia's skyway, deal a blow to the economy, and make the Russian elite and people directly feel the burden of war.
However, President Putin, who holds the decision-making power, shows no signs of ending the war.
Russia continues to expand its bombing targeting Ukrainian cities, energy infrastructure, and major industrial facilities.
Over the past week, the Russian military has carried out air strikes virtually uninterrupted on several Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kiev.
