Russia feels unfamiliar pain as Ukraine hobbles its air defenses, forcing tough choices

S-400 defense systems, sent by Russia, at the Brestsky training ground near Brest, Belarus.

Russian Defense Ministry / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

• Russia's air defenses are being stretched, forcing it to choose where to send protection.
• Experts say Ukraine's increased attacks on Russia have exposed and created gaps in its coverage.
• Russia has long had the upper hand with defenses, but Ukraine is finding new opportunities.

Russia's air defenses are being stretched, putting the country in a position where it has to decide what to protect.

Air defenses have been one of the most crucial pieces of weaponry in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and both sides have been using them to defend against drone and missile attacks and to stop each others' aircraft from flying into their air space.

But because of Ukraine's successful strikes and recent tactics, Russia now has to decide where to put its air defenses.

And that's giving Ukraine new opportunities to target weaker areas, warfare experts told Business Insider.

Russia's defenses are eroded

Last month, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said in their war update that Russia did not appear to have enough air defenses to protect everything it needed to — even in supposedly secure areas.

George Barros, a Russia analyst at the ISW, told BI that Russia has arranged its defenses to protect the areas that are most under threat, which means that other areas are then exposed.

An interceptor launches from a S-400 missile system in southern Russia.

DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images

If Ukraine can get past that first line of defense, then it can get deeper into Russia, where the country is "not adequately protected," he said.

Ukraine said it destroyed 59 Russian air defense systems in June, its second-highest monthly total in the war (after 73 in July 2023).

Those figures are not independently confirmed, and there is no objective figure for the number of Russian air defense systems that have been damaged or destroyed.

But Ukraine has been observed destroying a host of systems, including many of Russia's most advanced ones.

Ukraine is hitting Russia more

Ukraine is forcing Russia to consider where to defend by hitting more and more sites in Russia, the experts said.

Western allies recently gave Ukraine permission to use their weapons to hit some military targets in Russia, whereas before, it was limited only to targets in Russian-held territory in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also escalated its drone campaign, hitting airfields and oil facilities, sometimes hundreds of miles inside Russia.

Justin Bronk, an airpower expert at UK think tank Royal United Services Institute, said in June that Ukraine appeared to be pursuing a clear strategy to force Russia's air force "to either vacate its bases within several hundred miles of Ukraine's borders or dedicate an inordinate quantity of air defense systems to defending them."

The ISW's update last month said Ukraine's increasing drone attacks had stretched Russia's capabilities, and that the strikes "continue to pressure Russia's air defense umbrella and force the Russian military command to prioritize allocating limited air defense assets to cover what it deems to be high-value targets."

An image purporting to show a destroyed Russian S-400 launcher.

Ministry of Defense of Ukraine/Screengrab via X

It added that satellite imagery from May suggested Russia had concentrated some systems around Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence in Valdai, Leningrad Oblast.

Riley Bailey, a Russia analyst at the ISW, told BI that Ukraine's escalating, near-daily strikes put more pressure than ever on Russia's military command.

Michael Clarke, a Russia and Ukraine expert at RUSI and King's College London, who's also a UK national security advisor, said Russia had never anticipated being in a war where drones would feature as heavily as they have in this one.

The head of the Russian region of Tatarstan said in April that Russian companies and local authorities must defend themselves against Ukrainian drone strikes instead of relying on the state's defenses after targets in the region were struck.

The ISW called that "a clear acknowledgment and admonition of the Russian Ministry of Defense's (MoD) failure to defend Russian cities and critical infrastructure from Ukrainian drone strikes."

Ukrainian soldiers operating a drone.

Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images

Bailey said this was happening "because Russia doesn't have enough assets to widely cover Western Russia against these regular drone strikes."

The problem is heightened in Crimea

Ukraine has specifically targeted Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

Bailey said Ukraine has conducted a "pretty consistent" campaign to target Russia's air defenses in Crimea and strain Russian air defenses.

The UK Ministry of Defense said in April that the cumulative effect of Ukraine's attacks on defenses in the peninsula hurt Russia's ability to defend the Crimea airspace.

Clarke, the Russia and Ukraine expert at RUSI and King's College, said Ukraine has been "quite successful, particularly in Crimea, in destroying some of the Russian radars and antiaircraft systems."

He described Ukraine as attacking Russia's air defense network "and then using the holes in the network that they created to go through and attack the air bases, or in some cases, Sevastopol, the naval base."

He also said Russia's defenses have become more stretched than ever as, with the frontline static, Ukraine has increasingly focused on hitting into Russia's occupied territories and into Russia itself.

A Russian airfield near Sevastopol, Crimea, in March 2023.

Image © Planet Labs PBC

Ukraine's repeated strikes have resulted in reports that the Russian military has had to constantly move systems in Crimea, making it harder to continue using the peninsula as a military logistic hub and staging ground, Bailey said.

And Ukraine's attacks elsewhere in Russia appear to be making it harder for Russia's presence in Crimea.

Ukrainian partisan group ATESH said in June that Russia moved defenses from the peninsula to the Russian region of Belgorod, where Ukraine was attacking.

It's an air defense war

Analysts point to the current conflict as one that has become largely an air defense war — and one where Russia still has the upper hand.

Ukraine's air defenses are much smaller, and it frequently runs low on equipment.

A Patriot missile battery, like the ones Ukraine has been given by allies, fires an interceptor missile in Greece.

Anthony Sweeney/US Army

Meanwhile, Russia's air defense arsenal remains formidable.

Ukraine is also at a disadvantage, warfare experts said, because the US will not let it use the long-range weapons it has given to hit deep into Russia, where Russia keeps many of the aircraft it uses to launch attacks on Ukraine.

Getting that permission and more aircraft would create a more even playing field.

And being able to hit more targets in Russia would allow Ukraine to stop more attacks at their source — likely forcing Russia to make even more decisions about where to put its air defenses, and what areas to leave vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks.

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