Four Moscow Airports Shut Daily as Drone Alerts Trigger Russia's Carpet Protocol

Four airports serving Moscow have suspended operations almost every day this month, with some closures stretching to nine hours, after Ukrainian drones prompted Russia's aviation authority to seal off airspace. The pattern has repeated since October began.

Agentstvo, an independent investigative outlet, documented the shutdowns at Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Zhukovsky and Vnukovo. The closures follow a procedure Rosaviatsiya calls the "carpet" protocol, which locks down skies over a region when aircraft breach airspace, weapons fire or unidentified objects appear overhead.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy set out the goal in early September, saying Ukraine aimed to deny Russia use of the airspace around Moscow and other destinations. "Russian airspace will become completely unsafe," he told airlines, insurers and travelers. Ukraine filed a similar notice with the International Civil Aviation Organization the next day. Ukraine's own airspace has been shut since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Oleksandr Laneckij, who runs the consultancy Friendly Avia Support, said the threat is straightforward. "Essentially, every drone poses a military threat," Laneckij said, comparing the disruption to Saudi airspace losses caused by Yemen's Houthis. He said Ukraine's capabilities exceed those of the Houthis.

Military analyst Jan Matvejev said triggering the protocol requires only simple drones without warheads or long range. He said Ukraine's arms industry can turn out hundreds of combat-ready long-range drones a day, and that Russia's air defenses have yet to stop the flow. "If it were possible to shoot them down, they would have done so by now," Matvejev said. He added that Russia has not deployed more air-defense troops because it does not have them to spare. Writing in The Atlantic in October, Simon Shuster, citing well-informed sources, said Ukraine's efforts are "just getting started."

Both Laneckij and Matvejev flagged the risk to civilian flights. Laneckij said Russia could lower the bar for invoking the carpet protocol, raising the chance of an incident like the Azerbaijan Airlines crash on Christmas Day 2024. Investigators say a Russian air-defense missile, fired to counter drones, downed that plane and killed 38 people. Matvejev said Russia's air-defense rules have changed little since. He said machine-gun fire at a low-flying drone poses little danger to aircraft, while missiles carry risk because defects in mass production can send one toward an airliner. Matvejev also said a drone needs no warhead to cause damage, since a collision alone can be serious, and that a drone flying from Ukraine to Moscow must weigh dozens of kilograms.

Laneckij said foreign carriers weigh three factors in deciding whether to keep flying to Russia: the military threat, demand and insurance costs. He said Russia's aviation market has contracted as airlines shut down, which has lifted demand for seats on the remaining foreign carriers. "Whether they stay or not depends on the price they have to pay for the danger faced," he said.