Ukraine‘s long-range drone campaign is creating an increasingly serious problem for Russia‘s commercial aviation system. As originally reported by the Wall Street Journal, aviation-security specialist Osprey Flight Solutions has recorded 993 temporary airport shutdown events in August alone, equivalent to 32 per day. It further estimates that approximately 16,000 Ukrainian drones entered Russian airspace during the month.

Such has been the escalation that Russia has experienced more airport shutdown events in the past three months than during the whole of 2025. However, Kyiv’s ambitions now extend beyond causing delays at individual airports. President Volodymyr Zelensky has directly warned airlines and insurers about the increasing danger of operating through Russia.

Meanwhile, Ukraine subsequently asked the ICAO to encourage countries to stop civilian flights through Russian airspace. Ukraine has already demonstrated that it can disrupt Russian aviation. The bigger question is whether it can make flying there sufficiently risky and unreliable that foreign airlines eventually withdraw.

What Is Ukraine Actually Trying To Achieve?

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Forcing foreign airlines out, and thereby placing increasing pressure on the Russian economy, is the primary objective, but it forms part of a much broader strategy. Ukraine does not need to destroy terminals or crater runways to dramatically disrupt Russian aviation: drones approaching an airport will usually trigger precautionary restrictions and airspace closures, preventing aircraft from taking off or landing.

That creates delays, diversions, extra fuel burn, disrupted crews, and aircraft out of position. As any aviation enthusiast knows, bringing an airport to a grinding halt, even for just a few hours, has a long-lasting ripple effect across the system that can last days. That creates further disruption and millions of rubles in new costs for an already-weakened Russian economy, putting further pressure on it to come to the negotiating table.

There is also a military benefit to reducing civilian traffic. Reuters reported that Ukraine’s approach to ICAO was also intended to help clear Russian airspace to make space for additional Ukrainian attacks on other infrastructure. Then there is also the added benefit to Ukraine of forcing Russia to devote air-defense resources to protecting major cities and infrastructure, far from its own forces on the frontline. Zelensky has made no secret that Ukraine is seeking to achieve these economic and military objectives, saying:

“We want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who still uses Russia’s key airports: Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe. Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation, but there will be drones in Russia’s skies on a much larger scale. Russian airspace will effectively be closing.”

Russian airspace closures after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine created an imbalance in global aviation. It forced many US and European carriers into longer routings on flights to Asia, while giving other airlines, notably the Gulf and Chinese carriers, distinct routing advantages and access to the Russian market with far less competition. In effect, Ukraine is attempting to reverse that dynamic: rather than Russia’s airspace giving non-Western airlines a competitive advantage, Kyiv wants using it to become a serious liability.

Russian Airport Shutdowns Have Exploded In 2026

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Per The Guardian, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in reply to Zelensky’s warning that his statements were a “declaration of state terrorism.” However, he is also no doubt aware of the growing threat, because the escalation of drone disruptions at Russian airports is striking, particularly when compared to last year.

As a baseline, Osprey Flight Solutions recorded 1,923 airport shutdown events across all of 2025, an average of 5.3 per day. During the first five months of 2026, that rate had already nearly doubled to 9.6 per day. It then doubled again to 19.5 during June and July before reaching 993 shutdowns in August alone: 32 every day, and more than six times the 2025 daily rate.

By the end of last month, Osprey had already counted 3,626 shutdown events by the end of last month, with August alone producing more than half as many shutdowns as all of last year. The acceleration coincides with an enormous increase in Ukrainian drone activity: Osprey estimated that around 16,000 drones entered Russian airspace during August.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that more than 43,000 Ukrainian drones were intercepted over Russia and occupied Crimea during the three summer months, almost six times the previous summer’s level. Nor has the pressure noticeably disappeared with the end of summer.

On September 1, shutdowns affected all four airports in the Moscow system ( Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO), Moscow Domodedovo Airport (DME), Vnukovo (VKO), and Zhukovsky (ZIA)) after multiple drones were intercepted. Rosaviatsia, the federal aviation regulator, said scores of inbound aircraft were diverted to alternate airports, with approximately 60 canceled and delayed flights.

By September 4, Reuters described Moscow’s airports as being “the world’s most disrupted” because of frequent closures during drone attacks. Airport closures hit Moscow again on September 5, even as Russia and Ukraine temporarily paused attacks around the visits of US envoys. The pattern continued on September 7, when Rosaviatsia imposed arrival and departure restrictions at Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky during another large drone attack on Moscow.

Osprey doesn’t publish any month-to-date shutdown data, so it is too early to determine whether September will match August’s record 993 events. However, repeated restrictions across Russia’s most important aviation market in just the first week of the month suggest that August’s extraordinary level of disruption continues.

Sochi Is The Epicenter, But The Disruption Is Spreading

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Sochi International Airport (AER) stands out among Russia’s major commercial airports. An analysis of Rosaviatsia announcements (which are significantly understated compared to Osprey data) found restrictions on 70 separate days during the first half of 2026. However, the more recent tracker has recorded 132 shutdown episodes during a rolling 90-day period, showing the intensification of the drone attacks.

The rolling figures measure each restriction episode rather than unique affected days, and therefore highlight that in a number of cases, Russian airports are having multiple closures in a day. Furthermore, the duration of these disruptions is climbing. The more-than-daily events happening at ​Kaluga Grabtsevo Airport​ (KLF), about 120 miles (190 km) south-west of Moscow, now average more than ten hours.

The geography is arguably even more important than the ranking. Kazan, Saratov, Penza, Samara, Ulyanovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Cheboksary and Nizhnekamsk increasingly form a Volga-region belt of disruption. When several airports are restricted together, airlines can lose nearby diversion options, and large swathes of airspace need to be closed, making an already difficult recovery operation even harder.

Moscow Shows Why Even Short Closures Can Cause Huge Disruption

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Sochi might be the most disrupted Russian airport (for now), but Moscow demonstrates why closure frequency alone does not measure impact, and that Ukraine is now targeting specific airports, per The Insider. Domodedovo and Vnukovo have been the most restricted airports in recent months, as these have the highest concentration of foreign carriers.

At Domodedovo, Ukraine has been looking to scare away larger connector carriers like Emirates and Ethiopian Airlines. At Vnukovo, the focus is on making operations unpalatable for Turkish and Central Asian carriers like Turkish Airlines and Uzbekistan Airways, which has the most flights to Russia of any foreign carrier. By contrast, Sheremetyevo is Aeroflot‘s principal hub, and Ukraine has less to gain by creating disruption there.

The high traffic volumes at these four airports, and their relative proximity to each other, also make them higher-impact targets for Ukraine. While the distance is longer for its drones, once there, a smaller number can cause more chaos at the heart of Russia’s aviation network. The vulnerability has become particularly clear since June, with at least 12 days when all four Moscow airports have simultaneously stopped accepting and dispatching aircraft during a major drone attack.

For domestic carriers, the challenge is that they increasingly face restrictions that can appear, disappear, and reappear across several airports during the same operating day. However, more importantly, Ukraine believes that by targeting shutdowns of Moscow’s airports specifically, it can ultimately persuade foreign carriers to pull out, which will have the greatest and most immediate economic impact on Russia. That is why Zelensky has been ramping up the warnings.

Are Foreign Airlines Starting To Respond?

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The answer is yes, but not yet on anything approaching the scale that Ukraine wants. A glance at the table below shows that airlines from Turkey, Central Asia, the Gulf, and China continue to provide extensive Russian connectivity. Furthermore, Moscow said last week that foreign carriers had not notified it of any plans to dismantle their Russian schedules, per Reuters.

However, a few foreign airlines have already suspended Russia service (usually temporarily) in response to the worsening drone and security environment. EL AL halted its Tel Aviv–Moscow flights in June following an escalation in Ukrainian strikes inside Russia and a fresh security assessment, while Air Tanzania briefly suspended its Moscow service in early September after reviewing operating risks.

Other carriers, including Pegasus, Turkish Airlines and flydubai, have all canceled or altered Russia schedules during periods of drone-related airport disruption. However, so far, no major foreign airline has abandoned Russia, suggesting that Kyiv has begun to influence operational decisions without yet triggering the wider exodus it is seeking.

Indeed, China provides the strongest counterargument to the idea that an international retreat is already underway, as they continue flying and have even increased frequencies. For example, Hainan Airlines operates a daily service from Beijing Capital Airport (PEK) to Sheremetyevo, and has increased its Haikou Meilan International Airport (HAK) service from three to five weekly flights from September 3, immediately after Zelensky’s warning.

Chinese airlines have good reason to stay committed to Russia. They have long enjoyed an advantage over European competitors because of their continued ability to use Russian airspace, an asymmetry important enough to prompt proposed US restrictions on Russian overflights by Chinese carriers.

Will Ukraine Actually Succeed In Driving Foreign Airlines Away?

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For now, Ukraine has succeeded in disrupting foreign airlines, but not in driving the major ones out. While a handful of carriers have made changes, it’s clear that a temporary safety reassessment does not necessarily produce a permanent withdrawal. For Ukraine to fundamentally change Russia’s international connectivity, its campaign would need to alter the risk calculation for much larger operators, or for the companies insuring them.

The reason that calculation could change very quickly is that aviation has already seen what can happen when civilian aircraft and active air-defense systems occupy the same airspace. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was destroyed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard.

The Dutch Safety Board concluded that a Buk surface-to-air missile warhead detonated just above and to the left of the Boeing 777’s cockpit: notably, 160 commercial aircraft had crossed the affected airspace earlier that same day before it was finally closed. The disaster became a defining example of why airlines cannot rely solely on whether a state has formally declared its airspace open.

A much more recent warning came on December 25, 2024, when Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 encountered trouble while attempting to reach Grozny as Russian air defenses were responding to Ukrainian drones. The Embraer E190 eventually crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people aboard.

Azerbaijan’s president said the aircraft had been hit by fire from the ground, with preliminary findings attributing the damage to Russian air defenses, per The Print. Crucially, EASA now explicitly cites Flight J2-8243 when warning that Russian air-defense activity creates a “high risk to flight operations.”

That history is likely to loom large over every airline security department and insurer now assessing continued Russia operations. The immediate danger is not simply a Ukrainian drone striking an airliner: EASA cites flight 8243 and specifically warns about Russian surface-to-air systems capable of operating at all altitudes, potential misidentification, inadequate civil-military deconfliction, and widespread GNSS spoofing and jamming.

An airline may therefore remain willing to serve Moscow even after hundreds more airport closures, but one serious near-miss, a damaged aircraft, or another loss resembling MH17 or J2-8243, would change industry risk assessments overnight. Ukraine may ultimately succeed not by physically closing Russian airspace, but by making airlines and insurers decide that keeping it open is no longer worth the risk.