Vladimir Putin is facing growing political danger as Russia’s air defences fail to shield the country from Ukraine’s mass drone attacks.
Ukraine launched another large-scale drone swarm early this week, punching holes in the Russian President’s air defences, which could not intercept all of them. That is despite Russia shooting down 419 drones across 16 regions, including 60 approaching Moscow, according to Russian authorities.
The attacks, which are fast becoming a regular feature of the war, have exposed serious vulnerabilities in Russia’s ability to defend itself, as an increasingly emboldened Ukraine brings the war home to Putin.
Dramatic video shows the scale of Ukraine’s recent strikes. During a drone attack two weeks ago, black smoke poured from an oil depot into the sky above Moscow. At the start of June, drones hit a naval base in St Petersburg on the opening day of a high-profile conference. In May, Putin was forced into a humiliating downgrade of his Victory Day parade. Russia’s air defences are struggling to cope.
Vladimir Putin at the Victory Day military parade at Red Square in Moscow, where he had to severely scale back over concerns Russian air defences could not protect against a mass drone attack by Ukraine (Photo: Alexander Kazakov/AFP via Getty)Ukraine is going for Russian air defence
Ukraine’s systematic drone campaign against Russian air defences has been targeting in particular ground-based air systems and radars.
Ukraine’s 1st Unmanned Systems Centre claimed on Tuesday to have broken through a corridor in air-defence systems towards Moscow by destroying radars. “The leaky Russian air defence is not a social media skit or a coincidence,” it said. “The destruction of strategic facilities in St Petersburg, Ust-Luga and Moscow is possible only thanks to an open corridor in a saturated air-defence system on enemy territory.”
Ukraine has intensified its campaign against Russian air defence since late last year, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think-tank. This campaign is now “further straining available resources for its mounting air-defence requirements”, Grace Mappes, Russia analyst at the ISW, told The i Paper.
Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) say they have hit 194 targets in Russia’s integrated air defence this year, with 276 since last June. This includes 169 surface-to-air missile systems and self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, 76 radar stations and 31 electronic warfare systems. Between 27-29 June, they claimed to have hit a Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft gun and two radars in occupied Crimea. Open-source intelligence groups corroborate this escalating campaign.
The Pantsir S-1 air defence missile system atop the Russian Defence Ministry headquarters in Moscow in August 2023 (Photo: Alexander Nemenov/AFP)After degrading air defences, Ukraine can then target valuable assets far from the front line with subsequent strikes, launching more (and larger) drones deeper into airspace over Russian-controlled terrain. “Russia’s need for air defences will become increasingly dire the more Ukraine escalates these strikes, and the Kremlin’s weakness will become increasingly exposed,” said Mappes.
Drone saturation
For the formidable layers of air defences around cities like Moscow, Ukraine is using sheer numbers to force its way through. Waves of large-scale, saturation attacks aim to overwhelm Russian systems.
Russia claims it intercepted 8,849 drones in May, up from 2,504 in May 2025, according to analysis by Ukraine’s Come Back Alive foundation and The Wall Street Journal. While Russian figures are likely exaggerated, they point to the enormous number of drones Ukraine is now launching.
Black smoke rises from a Ukrainian drone strike on Moscow on 18 June, when an oil storage tank was hit. Ukraine has intensified its campaign against Russian air defence since late last year (Photo: Anadolu/Getty)Ukraine’s success rate is rising, too. Around 35 per cent of verified successful strikes on Russian territory occurred in June, with long-range strikes nearly tripling to 32 from 12 in May, according to the defence intelligence company Janes.
Ukraine’s USF commander, Robert Brovdi, said Moscow had more than 100 air-defence launchers and more than 50 Pantsir anti-aircraft systems as of mid-May. Yet, those systems could not prevent Kyiv’s major attacks on the capital last month. Reports suggest Russia has now redeployed more Pantsir systems to Moscow, likely from the front line.
Ukraine is able to inflict more damage thanks to its development of longer-range drones with larger payloads and more advanced navigation features. “So, in some cases, more are getting through to the target area from a given salvo,” said Justin Bronk, senior research fellow in air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute.
As a result, Kyiv can target key sites across occupied Ukraine and Russia including road and rail supply routes, oil refineries and air bases. “Ukraine’s escalating strike campaigns are forcing Russia to choose how to allocate manpower, money, and weapons between competing requirements to sustain frontline operations while conducting air-defence operations at both the mid- and long-ranges,” said Mappes. “Russia can’t do everything with the resources it has, however. Russia has too many strategic facilities in deep-rear areas to provide effective air defence cover for all of them.”
A Russian S-400 air defence system. Ukrainian forces claimed to have hit an S-400 air defence position near Kerch, Crimea last month (Photo: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty)David Kirichenko, associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, pointed to signs of strain in the system, including launchers with empty slots, use of older missiles and improvised ground launchers using modified air-to-air missiles.
Air-defence ammunition shortages are a growing problem for Russia, Bronk told The i Paper. “Particularly among some of the shorter-range systems like the SA-22 [Pantsir-S1] that are primarily reliable for counter-UAV defence … they’re running relatively short on ammunition in some areas. It is more expensive on average for the defending side to shoot down incoming relatively low-end missiles or rockets than it is for the offence.”
Russian vulnerabilities
Experts point to major flaws in the Russian system. Jonathan Lippert, president of Defense Tech for Ukraine, said Russia had “seriously underinvested in its drone interceptor capabilities to counter Ukraine’s long-range strikes”, while Alexey Chadayev, a Russian drone developer, blamed bureaucracy and legal restrictions.
Russia appears to be using mobile interceptor teams to protect the capital – with potentially embarrassing consequences, since an explosion at an oil refinery during the mass drone attack on Moscow last month may have been caused by a misfiring Russian air-defence missile.
Videos show the contrail of a missile streaking towards the oil tank right before it explodes. Experts said it may have been a Manpad, or portable air-defence system, fired by Russian soldiers.
New footage confirms that an errant Russian surface to air missile was responsible for the tank roof toss at the Moscow Oil Refinery this morning. pic.twitter.com/H5kdsuO2pY
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 18, 2026For all Ukraine’s successes, experts caution that Russian air defences are still capable and likely to be shooting down a large proportion of Ukrainian drones. Strikes on Russia’s heartlands and energy sites, however, are a blot on Putin’s image as defender of Mother Russia.
“These attacks are a real challenge to the Russian leadership’s narrative about how the war is going because they are a visible and therefore very humiliating and potentially politically dangerous counter-narrative,” said Bronk.
Even if the physical damage Ukraine’s drones can inflict is limited, the political damage to Putin’s prestige could be far more dangerous.
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