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Ukraine has warned commercial airlines to stop using Russian airspace as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to increase drone attacks across Russia in response to Moscow’s near-continuous strikes on Kyiv in the past week.
Zelenskyy told commercial carriers that “the safe days in Russia’s skies are over” as “there will simply be drones in Russia’s skies on a scale that has to be taken into account”.
“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,” he said on Tuesday night.
“Civilian aviation has no place among drones,” Zelenskyy warned, although he argued that Ukraine “does not threaten civilian aviation as such”.
Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities have suffered regular drone and missile barrages for months, but from August 27, Russian long-range drones flew towards the capital in small, near-continuous waves, hitting energy infrastructure, residential buildings and warehouses over five consecutive days.
“You can all see that the Russians have changed the tactics of their strikes against Ukraine and, since August, have been terrorising our people, our cities and our villages far more intensely,” Zelenskyy said.
At least 49 people have been killed in Kyiv and its surrounding region during the attacks. The raids continued on Wednesday, with the flight of jet-powered drones and several explosions being heard in Kyiv by an FT correspondent.
A broader escalation over the summer has seen both Ukraine and Russia using long-range drones to hit ships operating in the Black Sea as well as commercial warehouses, including sites owned by the Russian online retail group Wildberries. The effective blockade of Ukrainian ports has threatened grain exports.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin responded on Tuesday by warning that Ukraine would face three crises as a result of Russian “retaliatory” strikes on Ukrainian exports, including grain and other agricultural products.
“The first is a currency crisis . . . The second is a budget crisis . . . And the third is a banking crisis,” Putin said in a televised address.
Ukrainian officials have described the strikes on Wildberries and Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online marketplace, as part of a strategy that, along with the regular attacks on oil refineries, aims to compel Moscow to negotiate by strangling the economy and raising discontent within Russia.
