Last night Ukrainian drones struck Moscow; one dramatic image showed a mobile air defence outside the Kremlin itself. There have been drone attacks on the Russian capital before, but this is different. Russian commanders are marshalling forces to defend the city against a sustained onslaught.
It looks like the drone siege of Moscow is beginning for real. What does this mean for Ukraine’s strategic campaign?
An Escalating Series Of Attacks
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin claimed that on the night of 26–27 October Russian forces shot down some 34 drones flying towards Moscow, and that a total of 193 droned had been intercepted during the night.
Russian officials invariably claim that 100% of incoming drones are shot down and that any damage on the ground is caused by ‘falling debris.’ This is claimed even in cases where undamaged drones are filmed scoring direct hits on oil refineries.
It was obvious from the start of the war that Russian air defenses were leaky and not well suited to tackling small drones. In theory Moscow is one of the best defended cities in the world, with a double ring of silos housing interceptor missiles . But although these can stop a ballistic missile, they are not designed to detect, track and engage small, slow-moving drones like the Lyutyi and Fire Point FP-1 drones that Ukraine launches on a nightly basis.
The first eight drones attacked Moscow in May 2023, shocking Muscovites who had been assured that the war would not come to them. This was more in the nature of a wake-up call than a serious attack, and Ukraine focused on other targets until more than a year later in August 2024 when the Russians claimed to shoot down a raid of 11 drones.
Since then the attacks have become more frequent, hitting every two months this year in March, May, July and September. The March raid involved some 91 drones.
Now Ukraine is ramping up drone production, with the goal of producing 30,000 long-range strike drones this year. Makers Fire Point are already producing 100 FP-1 drones per day on their own , and there are many others involved in the campaign – HI Sutton has listed 24 varieties, and these are only the types that are known.
Meanwhile, after a delay due to technical issues, Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile is in production with deliveries expected in the next few weeks. There is even the possibility that U.S.-supplied Tomahawk missiles will start flying towards Russia.
Defending The Tsar
Russia is a large country, with many vulnerable targets. In recent weeks, the attacks have focused on Russian oil refineries, setting many of them ablaze, causing massive damage and setting off a gasoline crisis which is spreading across Russia as deliveries fail and gas stations run dry.
Last week Russia’s military commanders announced that reservists would be called up to defend oil refineries and other infrastructure from drones. This move it to prevent active-duty soldiers being drawn away from the war effort in Ukraine, but it is not clear how much protection it will provide. Without specialized air defence equipment – radar, anti-aircraft guns, integrated communications with national air defence – this may simply amount to part-time soldiers with Kalashnikovs firing into the sky whenever they think they see a drone.
We have seen ‘drone panics’ in the West in which distant aircraft, satellites , planets and other objects are misidentified as nearby drones. These sightings feed on each other; once everyone starts looking up, every unfamiliar light in the sky is a drone.
Shooting at them may be dangerous. Bullets that go up, will come down, sometimes with fatal results. The risks are amplified in the flammable environs of an oil refinery.
But Moscow will not be defended by these part-timers. Analysts have tracked movements of the most advanced S-300 and S4-400 missile systems, as well as mobile anti-aircraft vehicles, forming a layered defence of multiple rings.
“Systems are still being brought to the capital from other regions” according to analyst Vladislav Klochov.
The goal of this urban drone wall is not just to protect the modern Tsar. Putin will feel relatively secure in the bombproof bunkers beneath the Kremlin, and last year a number of deep Moscow bomb shelters from the Cold War were refurbished giving him plenty of options. It is not Putin who is in danger, but his power base. The defenses will keep drones away to reassure the urban elite, the high officials, the oligarchs, and military commanders. No explosions nearby means they and their families are safe and everything is going to plan and not falling apart horribly.
So far there has been little criticism of the ‘special military operation’ as the invasion of Ukraine is known in Russia. Putin’s popularity rating is an enviable 87%. A sustained series of drone raid alerts, blackouts and the sight off columns of smoke rising over Moscow every morning might cause people to think again.
Switching Targets
The Ukrainians may not be disappointed to see so many air defense assets rushed to Moscow,
“Anti-aircraft systems are concentrated only in the occupied territories, as well as near Moscow and St. Petersburg,” Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov told an interviewer. “In other places, they are either not present at all or do not pose a threat to drones. When we bypass the systems deployed along the border, our drones’ flight over Russia is always trouble-free.”
This should ensure a clear run to the surviving refineries, apart from some reservists.
As many have noted, Moscow is only now starting to experience what Kyiv has endured for years in terms of nightly drone attacks. But there are two big differences.
One is that Ukrainian counter-drone defenses have become progressively more capable, with a large number of verified kills. In Russia, military bloggers regularly fume about how ineffective their defenses are, and the slow rate at which new technology like interceptor drone is fielded.
The other difference is that while the Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and the continued existence of their country, the Russians are fighting to make a small addition to Putin’s vast empire. For them, war is optional. That is why Putin cannot afford to let Moscow burn, even as he watches oil refineries go up in flames one by one.