In August, Russia Closed Airports Nearly A Thousand Times Due To Attacks By Ukrainian Drones
- 4.09.2026, 14:35
This is a record figure.
Ukraine’s decision to close Russian airspace to civilian aircraft became fully apparent in August—even before Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared it unsafe. Last month, 32 airports—including those near Moscow and St. Petersburg—had to be temporarily closed due to drone attacks. A total of 993 such incidents were recorded, according to The Wall Street Journal citing data from Osprey Flight Solutions, a company specializing in aviation safety.
This is a record high, exceeding the number of closures in July by more than a third. A total of 2,182 instances of temporary airport closures were recorded over the summer. By comparison, this happened 1,923 times in all of 2025.
“The war unleashed by Russia is closing off its skies,” Zelenskyy announced on September 1. He called Russia’s airspace “completely dangerous,” warning airlines and insurers about the risks of flying to its airports. But prior to that, in August, Osprey Flight Solutions recorded another record: approximately 16,000 Ukrainian drones that crossed the border entered the airspace that Russia keeps open for civilian aircraft.
In June and July, the number of such UAVs exceeded 11,000 and 13,000, respectively. From the beginning of the year, the figure had remained at 4,000–5,000 per month, rising to 7,544 only in May.
Number of airport suspensions in Russia
Ukrainian airspace has been completely closed since February 2022, while in Russia only certain frontline regions are closed. Russia will not allow significant disruptions to civil aviation, Transport Minister Andrei Nikitin said on September 2.
“Ukraine does not pose a threat to civil aviation as such—not to a single civilian aircraft. There will simply be drones in Russian airspace, so we have to take that into account,” Zelenskyy had written earlier. In the first three days of September, an average of 86 flights per day were canceled in Russia due to drone attacks, according to FlightRadar24. In August, this figure was exceeded only twice—on the 10th (104) and the 18th (93).
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Volunteer Army defending the country’s southern regions, explained to the WSJ:
“This is no longer just a repetition of isolated, sporadic emergency warnings; it is a shift toward constant pressure aimed at paralyzing civil aviation operations in the European part of the Russian Federation.”
Ukrainian authorities plan to expand the scope of the so-called “Operation Carpet,” in which drones are to circle near Russian airports, forcing air traffic control to suspend takeoffs and landings, the WSJ reports. The Atlantic reported yesterday that, following Zelenskyy’s statement, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had launched an operation to block Moscow’s airports using thousands of drones.
According to the magazine, the then-Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov began preparing the operation early this year. The plan was to launch up to a thousand drones every night, equipped with artificial intelligence and maps of the area, to overload air defense systems, paralyze Moscow’s airports, and force foreign airlines to stop flying to Russia.
Turkey’s largest private airline, the low-cost carrier Pegasus, on the night of September 2 diverted several planes bound for Moscow, citing “technical and operational reasons.” The following day, Flydubai from the UAE did the same, citing schedule and route adjustments due to the “changing situation in the region.”
Earlier, in late June, Israel’s flagship airline suspended flights between Tel Aviv and Moscow, citing attacks by Ukrainian drones.
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