Ukrainian drones put pressure on Russian air defense, Russians cannot protect critical facilities

Russian governors have publicly acknowledged that regions cannot rely on Russian air defense but must counteract Ukrainian drones themselves.

Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia continue to put pressure on Russia's air defenses and force Russian military commanders to prioritize the allocation of limited air defense assets to cover what they consider to be important targets, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports.

Satellite images from May 6 show at least seven Pantsir-1 medium-range air defense missile systems protecting Russian leader Vladimir Putin's residence in Valdai.

Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies and a member of the civilian advisory council to the Russian Defense Ministry, said on July 16 that such “focal” air defense coverage does not make sense on a large scale, since it allows Ukrainian drones to bypass Russian air defense coverage and strike from unprotected directions.

Analysts note that the Russians clearly lack the air defense systems to protect all critical facilities in the west of the country. Pukhov called on the Russian military to implement an innovative decentralized approach to protecting facilities in Russia from Ukrainian drones and warned that Ukrainian drones will likely penetrate deep into Russia.

Amid problems with air defense, the occupiers began to form mobile fire groups, which Ukraine successfully deployed to protect against strikes from Russian Shahed-136/131 drones. However, the Russian Federation has not yet deployed these groups on the scale necessary to sufficiently protect critical facilities in the West.