Ukraine has been conducting sustained drone strikes aimed at disrupting air traffic around Moscow, forcing the closure of the Russian capital's major airports on an almost daily basis throughout October.

Moscow's four main airports — Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Zhukovsky and Vnukovo — have had to suspend operations repeatedly, with closures lasting up to nine hours on some days, according to reports from independent investigative outlet Agentstvo.

In early September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine would seek to cut off airspace around Moscow and other Russian cities. "Today, we would like to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who continues to use major Russian airports: Russian airspace will become completely unsafe," Zelenskyy said.

The following day, Ukraine sent a corresponding warning to the International Civil Aviation Organization. Ukraine's own airspace has been closed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Meanwhile, Kyiv was struck by a new wave of missile attacks on Wednesday, hours after Russia said it was "ready in principle" to resume peace talks with the United States and Ukraine. Zelenskyy said the strikes came in three waves, launched by what he called "Russian humanitarians" — a pointed reference to US envoy Steve Witkoff, who had described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "humanitarian" following a meeting in St Petersburg the same day.

Russia's aviation authority, Rosaviatsiya, has introduced an emergency safety protocol known as a "carpet" procedure, designed to immediately shut down airspace over a specific region or around affected airports when an aircraft violates Russian airspace, weapons are used, or unidentified objects appear in the skies.

"If there is a military threat, a specific section of airspace is closed off, and this carpet is declared," said Oleksandr Laneckij, chief executive of the Friendly Avia Support consultancy. "Essentially, every drone poses a military threat."

Laneckij noted that Yemen's Houthis have managed to significantly disrupt Saudi airspace, and added: "I think Ukraine's military capabilities far exceed those of the Houthis."

Military analyst Jan Matvejev said Ukraine would have little difficulty severely disrupting Moscow-area air traffic. Although Ukraine has not yet managed to completely shut down Russian airspace, its armed forces "remain committed to this idea," he said.

"To close off the airspace and trigger the 'carpet' plan, all you need are simple drones that don't have to be equipped with a warhead or even have a long range," Matvejev said. He added that Ukraine's arms industry can produce hundreds of combat-ready long-range drones per day, giving it the resources needed to sustain the campaign.

Ukraine's efforts to shut down Russian airspace are "just getting started," according to a report published in October in The Atlantic, citing well-informed sources.

On the question of whether Russia can stop the drones, Matvejev was skeptical of Moscow's air-defense capabilities. "If it were possible to shoot them down, they would have done so by now," he said, adding that Russia would have deployed additional air-defense troops if they were available.

Both analysts raised concerns about the risk to civilian aviation. Laneckij warned that Russia might lower the threshold for declaring the carpet protocol, increasing the danger of incidents similar to the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2024. Investigators concluded that the aircraft was struck by a Russian air-defense missile fired during a drone defense operation, killing 38 people.

Matvejev said little had changed in Russia's air-defense protocol since that incident. He explained that in operations against low-flying drones, targets are visually identified and engaged with machine guns, posing minimal risk to nearby aircraft. However, when anti-aircraft missiles are deployed, the danger increases significantly.

"A missile could have defects that are practically unavoidable in mass production and could veer toward an aircraft flying nearby," Matvejev said. He added that such defense measures could not guarantee the safety of civilian aircraft during operations.