Russian airspace becoming unsafe for commercial airlines, Zelenskyy says

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared that Russia’s airspace is becoming unsafe for commercial airlines as Vladimir Putin promised to step up strikes against Ukraine’s energy facilities in the run-up to winter.

The Ukrainian president said there was no intention to directly threaten civilian flights, but the growing number of attack drones being flown into Russia by Ukraine would have to be “taken into account” by the aviation industry.

“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,” Zelenskyy said in a statement.

Ukraine’s foreign secretary, Andrii Sybiha, said Kyiv had notified the International Civil Aviation Organization that “Russian airspace is not safe for civilian aviation” because of increased military activity.

A rapid escalation of Ukrainian military capability in the past few months has allowed Ukraine’s forces to strike at targets around Moscow, St Petersburg and other locations deep inside Russia.

Reliable figures for the number of drone flights are hard to obtain but Ukraine is already capable of launching a few hundred a day, and military sources say the country is chasing a target of 1,000 drones in an effort to hurt Russia’s economy.

Justin Bronk, an aviation analyst at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said he believed Ukraine could force “periodic closures of Russian airports on a semi-regular basis” by relying on an element of surprise.

It could do so by flying small waves of drone at short notice, though trying to close an airport permanently would be difficult, he said, because a sustained attack would become predictable and easier for air-defence systems to halt.

Ukraine’s commercial airspace has been closed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 because Russia has been able to strike targets throughout the country, making airports unsafe for civilians.

This year, Ukraine has begun bombing oil refineries and warehouses near Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as hitting military and industrial sites at ranges in excess of 2,000km (1,250 miles) from its border.

Concerns about the safety of civilian aviation in the war zone linger. A Malaysian airlines plane was shot down as it flew over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 by Russian separatists operating a surface-to-air missile launcher. All 298 people onboard were killed.

Putin described Zelenskyy’s remarks as “state terrorism”, saying: “Negotiations are not conducted with terrorists.”

Giving one of his most detailed updates on the war, the Russian leader told a news conference that Moscow was preparing to step up its campaign bombing Ukraine’s energy facilities this winter, aiming to knock out heating and electricity supplies.

“The Russian armed forces have been ordered to prepare and carry out mass strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities. They are striking us, and they will get a response,” Putin told reporters after a two-day summit in Kyrgyzstan. “I’m not saying we’ll collapse the economy there, but it’s a serious challenge for them.”

Asked whether Russia would strike British military facilities in the UK that produced weapons for Ukraine, Putin sidestepped the question, saying: “That’s a military secret.”

Russia earlier accused the UK of “escalation” and threatened “consequences” after reports that British-made drones were used by Ukraine in long-range strikes deep inside its territory.

Putin sought to stress that Russian forces retained the initiative on the battlefield in Ukraine, despite Moscow’s slowing progress. He appeared to push back against western intelligence reports suggesting he was being given an overly optimistic picture of the war, saying he relied on numerous sources of information that together provided him with an “objective assessment” of the battlefield.

Russia’s sluggish advance on the battlefield has fuelled widespread speculation that the Kremlin could resort to another round of mobilisation, the first since Putin called up about 300,000 reservists in September 2022.

Zelenskyy and western officials have warned that Moscow could be preparing such a move, though its diplomats do not consider it a certainty. Addressing the speculation for the first time, Putin dismissed the prospect of a new mobilisation as “nonsense”.

Also on Wednesday, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said a drone attack on Leipzig airport marked a new escalation by Russia, which fitted a broader pattern of “repeated incursions in our airspace, drones that paralyse our airports, interference with our critical infrastructure”.

The German government said on Tuesday that Russia was responsible for a drone laden with explosives discovered at Leipzig airport last month near a Ukrainian plane used to transport weapons.

Von der Leyen said: “Europeans are faced with the hard truth that this is the new normal. We have to step up, and that means being ready to respond to Russia’s recklessness faster and better.”

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, who told reporters Russia had grown “increasingly reckless” and there had been an increase “in malign activities, targeting our territory directly”.

The EU is drawing up further sanctions against Russia targeting about 1,600 companies and individuals. Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, said the bloc should pass these sanctions in response to the Leipzig attack and others.“Hybrid war is not just nuisance on the internet,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with his European counterparts.

“Hybrid war means assassination squads, it means arsonists, it means blowing up moving trains, like in Poland, it means breaches of airspace with drones and cruise missiles. We need to convince Putin that such actions are not for free.”

The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the Leipzig attacks had the “hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism”, adding that Brussels had summoned Russia’s ambassador to the bloc.