Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has told airlines still flying over Russia to prepare for a sharp escalation in drone strikes, warning that the airspace is turning into a hazard zone for civilian flights. Ukraine has formally notified the United Nations aviation body of the danger, a move that puts pressure on carriers from Turkey, China and the Gulf who continue to use Russian routes.
Zelensky delivered the warning in his nightly video address on Tuesday. He named airlines, insurers, and operators still relying on Russian airports directly. “We want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, everyone who still uses key Russian airports: the Russian sky is becoming completely dangerous,” he said.
President Vladimir Putin responded within hours, calling the statement a “declaration of state terrorism.” Speaking to reporters at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Kyrgyzstan, he added: “They are asking us to resume negotiations… but you don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
A Warning Aimed at Specific Cities
Zelensky was careful to separate his warning from any intent to target passenger planes. “Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation as such, not a single civilian aircraft,” he said, adding that Kyiv wants to avoid the loss of innocent lives. But he made clear the scale of Ukraine’s drone campaign will make Russian skies unpredictable regardless of intent. “There will simply be drones in Russia’s skies on a scale that has to be taken into account,” he said.
He singled out flights into major cities, particularly St Petersburg and Moscow, where Russia’s busiest airports sit.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha followed up with a formal notice. Writing on X, he confirmed Ukraine had told the International Civil Aviation Organization that Russian airspace is no longer safe for civilian flights. “We want to prevent unintended incidents,” he said. He added a blunt line summarizing Kyiv’s strategy: “The war is returning home to Russia.”
Airlines Still Flying, for Now
Despite the warning, flight tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed dozens of aircraft crossing Russian airspace on Wednesday afternoon, including planes arriving at and departing from Moscow’s main airports.
Qatar Airways, which flies into Moscow and crosses Russia en route to the US west coast, said it continues to assess conditions rather than suspend routes. The carrier said its flight planning is “guided by rigorous and continuous monitoring of airspace security, safety assessments, and geopolitical developments.”
FlyDubai, the Emirati state-owned carrier, gave a similar response. It said it would “closely monitor the evolving situation in the region and adjust our flight schedules and routings as necessary.”
Most major Western airlines stopped flying over Russia after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Carriers from China, Turkey and Gulf states kept flying the routes, drawn by the time and fuel savings on journeys between Asia and Europe. Ukraine, for its part, has kept its own airspace closed to civilian aircraft throughout the war.
Months of Airport Disruption
Ukraine’s drone campaign has already caused repeated chaos at Russian airports. Moscow has been hit hardest: at times, all four of the city’s major airports have had to halt arrivals and departures simultaneously. More cancellations were reported on Wednesday.
Ukraine does not need to strike an airport directly to ground flights. Russia runs an air defense protocol known as “Kovyor,” meaning carpet, which automatically suspends flights in any area where a drone is detected.
Beyond airports, Ukraine has struck energy facilities deep inside Russian territory and hit storage depots belonging to Wildberries and Ozon, the country’s two largest online retailers.
Aviation risk advisory firm Osprey Flight Solutions told clients in an alert that most Ukrainian drone and missile strikes are likely to stay within 300 kilometers of the border. But the firm expects near-daily attacks farther into Russian territory to continue through the year. “There is also a realistic possibility that the frequency of Ukrainian strikes will continue to increase in the short term deep inside Russian territory,” the alert stated. It flagged a separate danger for aviation: “It is assessed that miscalculation and/or misidentification is likely in areas related to the Ukraine conflict.”
Fighting Intensifies on Both Sides
Putin’s remarks came as Russian forces kept up their own offensive. Strikes killed 12 people in Ukraine on Tuesday, and further attacks hit Odesa, Sumy and Kyiv on Wednesday. Russia’s military has said it is preparing what it called “massive” strikes on Ukrainian power stations. Kyiv and the surrounding region have now been attacked for seven consecutive days.
Zelensky’s warning fits a pattern he has repeated in recent weeks. He said a few weeks ago that Russia was striking Ukraine daily and that Ukraine’s military had “begun the process of bringing the war back to Russia.” Over the weekend, he repeated that Russia needed to feel the conflict “returning to where it came from.”
Putin acknowledged that Ukrainian strikes have damaged infrastructure inside Russia. He claimed the damage was limited, saying “only 10%” of the country’s oil refineries still need repair.
A History of Aviation Disasters Over Conflict Zones
The dangers of flying near active war zones are well documented. In 2014, months after fighting broke out between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, a Russian-made missile shot down a passenger plane over the region, killing all 298 people on board.
Last year, the UN’s aviation agency formally ruled that Russia bore responsibility for that downing, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which crashed in July 2014. The Kremlin has consistently denied any responsibility for the disaster.
A more recent incident underscores the same risk. In 2024, Putin apologized to the president of Azerbaijan after a commercial airliner was shot down in Russian airspace, killing 38 people. He described it as a “tragic incident” that occurred while Russian air defense systems were responding to Ukrainian drones.
What Comes Next
With Ukraine now formally on record with the UN’s aviation body, airlines using Russian airspace face a harder choice: keep flying routes that save time and fuel, or reroute around a war zone that both sides say is intensifying. For now, most carriers outside the West are choosing to keep monitoring rather than divert, but Zelensky’s warning signals that Ukraine intends to make that choice increasingly difficult to sustain.
