President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a direct warning Tuesday to airlines, insurers, and anyone still using Russian airports, saying Ukraine’s intensifying drone campaign is making Russian airspace unsafe for civilian flights.
Zelensky’s nightly address named three groups — airlines still flying through Russian airspace, the insurers covering them, and anyone still operating out of major Russian airports. “Russian airspace is becoming completely dangerous,” he said.
The goal, Zelensky said, is to prevent civilian casualties, not to threaten civilian aviation itself. “We in Ukraine do not want innocent lives lost,” he said. “There are no longer any safe moments in Russia’s skies.”
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Markets reacted almost immediately. On the Moscow Exchange, Aeroflot stock lost over 5% of its value within minutes, sliding as low as 30.36 rubles per share.
Ukraine’s own drone strikes into Russia will intensify as a direct response to Moscow’s attacks, Zelensky said, warning that the war “cannot and will not remain” confined to Ukrainian territory, and that Russian skies “will increasingly become home to our drones and missiles.”
This wouldn’t be unprecedented. Kyiv’s airspace has been off-limits to commercial flights for the entire war, going back to February 2022, and a handful of nations, the US, UK, and Canada among them, have separately barred their carriers from Ukrainian skies given the military and cyber dangers involved.
Zelensky said Ukraine isn’t targeting civilian planes at all, but that the sheer volume of drone activity means “civil aviation has no place among drones.”
