ANALYSIS: Russia’s Air Defense Problems Are Growing
The roads to Crimea are beginning to tell the story of Russia’s defensive dilemma. Burned trucks, stranded convoys and air defense systems hit while being transported suggest that Ukraine’s drone war is reaching deeper into the logistical arteries that sustain Russia’s occupation.
Ukrainian drones also recently gatecrashed Vladimir Putin’s St. Petersburg economic forum. Mobile internet was shut down and the airport temporarily closed. It was not the sort of investment climate brochure the Kremlin had in mind, after the drone threat forced Moscow to hold a toned-down parade in May.
“Leningrad and Moscow regions are highly populated and economically vital for Russia’s war machine,” said Cristian Terheș, a member of the European Parliament. “Ukraine is successfully executing classic economic and psychological warfare against them.”
The embarrassment extended to the Baltic Fleet: Kyiv’s drones targeted the Kronstadt naval base near St. Petersburg and struck the corvette Boikiy in dry dock, showing that even Russia’s northern naval sanctuaries are becoming vulnerable.
Russia’s air defense headaches stretch across the country. The Kremlin has reportedly created a new Ka-29 helicopter regiment to shield the Northern Fleet from Ukrainian drones near the Kola Peninsula, roughly 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles) from Ukraine.
What began as a defensive “drone wall” for Ukraine designed to slow Russian assaults has evolved into something much larger. With the growing role of mid-range strikes, Ukraine is increasingly targeting the Russian air defense system itself, along with the frontline logistical routes.
Things change fast
This was not the war Moscow expected at the start of the full-scale invasion, or even a year ago. Things change fast in drone warfare.
“Ukrainian territory must be free of Russian forces,” wrote the Azov First Corps. “The surest path to achieving this is pushing the ‘sanitization zone’ for enemy logistics closer to Russia itself and occupied Crimea.”
The point was never that every drone would penetrate Russian defenses. The point was attrition. Force the system to fire constantly. Expose radar positions. Exhaust interceptor stocks. Create gaps. Then widen them.
A March 2026 report by the Tochnyi open-source collective identified hundreds of Ukrainian strikes against Russian air defense and anti-access systems over less than a year. The main effort by Kyiv is the attempt to systematically degrade Russia’s stretched air defenses.
That degradation is already creating opportunities. Open-source military analyst Jakub Janovsky said the suppression and destruction of Russian air defenses has allowed Ukraine to strike high-value targets those systems were meant to protect, including air bases, missile launchers and other military infrastructure.
A May 2026 Tochnyi report described a three-stage erosion of Russian logistics: HIMARS forcing depot dispersal in 2022, FPV drones expanding a kill zone to roughly 35 kilometers, and mid-range drones now striking convoys up to 150 kilometers deep. In May alone, Tochnyi recorded 130 geolocated strikes on Russian logistics vehicles.
Serhii Kuzan, chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center (USCC), said Ukraine’s medium-range strike campaign could also directly affect Russian drone units at the front by disrupting the supply of drones, munitions and other equipment.
Strikes on frontline weapons depots, he said, can reduce both the intensity and effectiveness of Russian drone operations, including potentially future launches of Shahed-type attack drones from occupied territory. If sustained, Kuzan argued, the campaign would not merely degrade Russia’s drone component, but place broader pressure on all elements of Russian frontline forces.
Russia in panic mode
Russian milbloggers now argue that convoys need their own mobile air-defense packages of radars, electronic warfare systems, anti-aircraft guns and interceptor drones because Ukrainian strike drones have made large stretches of occupied territory too dangerous to secure permanently.
The air defense strain is being felt across Russia. Rybar, a Russian Telegram channel with more than 1.5 million subscribers, warned that Ukraine was systematically depleting air defenses and may have been trying not only to threaten the parade, but to force Moscow to pull more systems toward the capital.
Even the heavily protected air defense ring around Moscow is being penetrated with growing frequency.
Russia spent years perfecting offensive drone warfare against Ukraine. It scaled production of Shahed-style drones and terrorized Ukrainian cities with nightly barrages. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s former commander in chief, warned in May that “modern war is already different, and therefore it is simply impossible to predict its outcomes.”
But while Moscow focused on offense, Ukraine was forced into defensive adaptation, building layered drone defenses that gradually evolved into an offensive drone campaign of its own. Russia, by contrast, invested far less in cheap drone interception, continuing to rely heavily on expensive surface-to-air missiles that Russian milbloggers increasingly warn are in short supply.
Rostec’s new ZAK-30 Tsitadel, a 30mm anti-drone turret using timed airburst ammunition, shows Moscow is now trying to develop cheaper ways to counter small drones. But its reported short range makes it more useful for defending fixed sites than solving Russia’s broader air-defense problem.
“With its dwindling stocks of these expensive assets, Russia has little choice but to develop and rush new interceptors into service,” said open-source analyst Roy Gardiner, as Ukrainian long-range strikes continue growing in both number and effectiveness.
According to the Financial Times, Ukraine’s defense ministry reported that in the first four months of 2026, production of reconnaissance drones was already up 441% compared with all of 2025, while mid-strike drones were up 312%.
Gardiner said Ukraine’s recent increase in the payload capacity of its mid-range FP-2 drones to 200 kilograms points to another problem for Russian defenses. At that size, the drone begins to resemble a low-cost cruise missile, with enough destructive power to threaten hardened infrastructure at a fraction of the price.
Ukraine built acoustic detection networks using AI-assisted microphones capable of tracking drones and directing mobile fire teams toward their flight paths. Russia did not. In occupied Zaporizhzhia, Russian-installed authorities reportedly eased Telegram restrictions after complaints that alternative alert systems were inadequate, while milbloggers said the ban was also hampering mobile air-defense teams.
Russia continues relying heavily on expensive interceptor missiles and electronic warfare systems that are becoming less effective against drones equipped with AI-assisted targeting and Starlink connectivity.