Monday, July 21, when he was preparing to fly with his family for a long stay in Turkey, Vladimir Shevchuk, a 38 -year -old Moscow, had to question all his vacation: like tens of thousands of other Russians hoping to travel abroad in recent weeks, his flight has been canceled due to the presence of Ukrainian drones in the country’s air space.
Thus, the English daily The Guardian reports that what had started as isolated interruptions of air traffic above the Russian capital has turned into a systematic campaign. The goal: to bring the war closer to the ordinary population. Even if these drawbacks are incomparable to the deadly attacks suffered daily by the Ukrainian population, this could be one of the most tangible manifestations that the conflict begins to interfere in the life of Russian civilians.
In reality, few Ukrainian drones manage to unravel the aerial defenses of Moscow. However, their relatively low cost compared to chaos that they actually cause an effective way to undermine the feeling of stability of Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long given up convincing Russian civilians to oppose war. kyiv’s new strategy therefore seems to aim to make the cost of continuous assault impossible to ignore for the latter, not only because of the number of deaths on the front, but also because of increasing disturbances in their daily lives.
Destabilize Russian opinion and economy
This daily disturbance technique already seems to begin to bear fruit: canceled flights and hampered holidays have become an important subject in public opinion in Russia. Beyond these small frustrations, it is Russian commercial aviation which risks quickly undergoing the economic consequences, while the sector is already largely impacted by the economic sanctions linked to war.
According to the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency, during the most intense disruption of disruption which took place on July 6 and 7, 2025, the country’s airlines canceled 485 flights and have delayed around 1,900 others. More than 43,000 forced reimbursements of tickets were made, 94,000 passengers were hosted and more than 350,000 catering vouchers were distributed.
Air chaos already seems to have drawn the attention of Russian leaders: at the beginning of July, Vladimir Putin had turned his Minister of Transport without providing an official explanation, before the latter was found dead on July 7, 2025. It must be said that the risks for Russia to maintain its open sky during the presence of Ukrainian drones are considerable: last December, 38 people were killed when the Russian aerial defenses Establish an Azerbaijan Airlines airliner in error, while the latter were trying to intercept a Ukrainian drone targeting Grozny airport. This incident had sparked an unprecedented diplomatic break with Azerbaijan.
Russian airports are therefore preparing for this chaos to become permanent. In Moscow-Cheremetievo, the country’s busiest airport, employees were filmed Tuesday July 22, distributing mattresses to blocked passengers. Several major international airlines continue to ensure flights to Russia, including Turkish Airlines and Emirates, would also have started to adjust their schedules to take into account the increasingly frequent closures in aerial space.
