Signal No. 137 · Russian airspace, notified

President Zelenskyy used Tuesday's evening address to warn airlines and insurers. "Today, we want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who still uses Russia's key airports: Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe," he said, and: "Russian airspace will effectively be closing — the war started by Russia is closing its skies." He also said — "Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation as such — not a single civilian aircraft. There will simply be drones in Russia's skies on a scale that has to be taken into account" — and said the foreign ministry would put the information before international organisations.

On Wednesday afternoon Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote that Ukraine "has officially notified ICAO that the Russian airspace is not safe for civilian aviation because of increased military activity", urged everyone to avoid it, and grounded the step in Article 51 of the UN Charter: "We want to prevent unintended incidents… The war is returning home to Russia." The letter itself goes further than the post. Sent by Infrastructure Minister Mykola Kalashnyk to ICAO Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar Gómez and obtained by ZN.ua, it asks that ICAO member states ban civil flights in Russian airspace. It cites the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft hit by an S-300 in 2024, two further aircraft hit by Russian air defence, and the GPS interference logged by Ryanair, Wizz Air and Finnair.

Pegasus cancelled twelve flights to and from Vnukovo overnight and diverted one from Antalya, then said on Wednesday that the cancellations were for "technical and operational reasons" and that its Russia flights from 2 September operate as scheduled; Turkish Airlines cancelled four Moscow services and kept the rest; Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Air India and the Chinese operators continued to fly to or through Russia. Rosaviatsia answered in the evening with a NOTAM of its own: the Ukrainian documents "have no legal force" and breach the Chicago Convention, and Russian air transport and its ground infrastructure "continue to operate as planned", foreign carriers included. Zelenskyy said in Wednesday's address that Kyiv had information that "the first airlines have begun refusing to perform flights to Russian airports", naming none.

Putin answered on Tuesday evening in Bishkek, at the press conference after the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. The airline warning "amounts to state terrorism", he said; "you don't negotiate with terrorists"; and "they're striking ours — they'll get an answer." Putin said he had ordered the armed forces to prepare and carry out massive strikes on Ukraine's energy facilities — the policy the defence ministry announced on Sunday, now stated as an order by the president. Asked about British military facilities in Ukraine, he said that if there are any "then definitely" they become targets, and called the question of facilities on British territory "a military secret".

Overnight the air force counted two Iskander-M from Crimea, two Kh-59/69 from over the Black Sea and 174 attack drones, about half of them jet-powered. It neutralised 141 of the 174 — 138 drones and three Banderol jet drones — gave no outcome for the four missiles, and logged hits at sixteen locations, Odesa and Kyiv regions the main targets.

Ukrenergo called it "a massive missile and drone attack on the energy infrastructure of the Odesa region" and listed four other regions with new outages: Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Kherson. The authorities' figure carried by Reuters is more than 350,000 homes without power. Moscow's ministry described its own targets as "four energy infrastructure facilities" in Odesa and the region that "ensured the functioning of Ukrainian ports", plus a pilot production site for uncrewed boats and six fuel tanks in the port. In Kyiv, the seventh consecutive day of attacks left at least eleven wounded by Reuters' count; two people died in Dnipro.

On the Ukrainian side, the General Staff on Wednesday confirmed Tuesday's strike on the Novatek complex at Ust-Luga — a hit, a fire, damage still being assessed — which on Tuesday had rested on the military intelligence directorate's claim alone. The scale Zelenskyy referred to was on Russia's own lists: the defence ministry counted 130 drones overnight across twelve regions, Moscow region, Tula, Oryol and Tambov among them, and a further 238 between 08:00 and 20:00 Moscow time across fifteen regions and the Black Sea. Leningrad region, where Ust-Luga sits, appears on neither list.

In the night of Tuesday to Wednesday the F125 frigate Sachsen-Anhalt fired at least two LORA ballistic missiles from canisters set up on her flight deck, one round from each, in the sea area between Ireland and Iceland. Two frigates deployed for the trial; the preparations were kept largely quiet, and shipping and air traffic were warned 45 days ahead, per dpa. hartpunkt reports the firing as an innovation project under the navy's OPEX series — operational experimentation — run with the Bundeswehr innovation centre at Erding. Israel Aerospace Industries, which builds the missile, describes the installation as a command trailer and a launcher placed on the ship, and says both rounds flew their course and struck the target: "both the weapon system and the missile successfully met all test objectives".

The published figures are IAI's: 5.2 metres, 62.3 centimetres in diameter, 1.6 tonnes, a quasi-ballistic trajectory, GNSS/INS guidance with a circular error probable of ten metres, and under ten minutes from decision to launch against a target whose position is known. IAI states the range of the ground- and ship-launched variant as 90 to 430 kilometres; dpa's report puts the weapons to be procured at more than 500, attributing the figure to no one. Vice Admiral Jan Christian Kaack, the navy's chief, said that with the shot "we have written naval history", that the system "can be used successfully from our units and the possible range exceeds anything we have known so far", and that the trial opens "a new chapter in deterrence and defence readiness at sea". Plans for a procurement of the weapons are now to be advanced, dpa reported in the sentence after the spokesman's statement, without attributing it; no quantity, value, requirement or timetable was published, and hartpunkt notes that systems tested under the series have later entered service, IAI's BlueWhale underwater vehicle among them.

The same morning TKMS reported that INS Drakon, the third and last Dolphin-class boat with air-independent propulsion, had left Kiel for Israel after handover, with an extended sail that is to house a vertical launch system, and that the first of three Dakar-class boats is in production.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and WDR reported on Wednesday that investigators have identified two suspects. The first is a Belarusian with a Russian passport, matched by DNA traces on the drone, on an explosive-filled tin and on an antenna near the airport; he entered the Schengen area on an Italian tourist visa issued at an Italian mission in Minsk in late April. The second is a Russia-born holder of a Latvian passport who flew into BER in late July, drove to Saxony in a rental car, left Germany by air two days before the attack, and is described as the logistics coordinator and instructor. Neither is in custody and neither has re-entered Europe since, and the investigators cited doubt that an arrest will follow. The federal government's statement of Tuesday named no suspect; no authority has confirmed the reporting.

In Bishkek late on Tuesday Putin asked "where is the evidence?", called the evidence "fabricated", described the German measures as a serious mistake and said Chancellor Merz "has lost the trust of citizens because he is not protecting Germany's national interests"; Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said Russia "will respond as we deem necessary, when we are ready for it"; and on Wednesday Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, called on Telegram for "a direct strike" on military production facilities working with Ukraine and on "a few other places in Berlin". The foreign ministry summoned Germany's chargé d'affaires over what it called anti-Russian actions. On Wednesday no Goethe-Institut closure, consulate measure or expulsion was announced; the Goethe-Institut remains named as the mirror to the Russisches Haus, not executed.

At the Gymnich at Druids Glen, Kaja Kallas said the attempted attack "had all the hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism" and that the EU had summoned Russia's representative in Brussels; France, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands and Ireland announced summonings of their own the same day, Germany's having come on Tuesday.

The 1,600-name proposal in preparation since mid-August went to capitals ahead of the meeting — visa bans and asset freezes on the military complex, for adoption next month — and Kallas said more may be added; Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said further listings of individuals would follow in the coming weeks. At the closing press conference Kallas reported "broad support to move with an EU visa entry ban for Russian ex-combatants and tougher visa restrictions for Russian tourists", and said visas "are a tool for these people who mean harm to get into the European Union". That measure was in July's package until France and Italy narrowed it to a legal framework without implementation; the Commission is to present implementing measures in October.

Some ministers reiterated the Dutch–Polish–Spanish–Swedish call on the roughly EUR 210 billion of immobilised central-bank assets, EUR 185 billion of it at Euroclear; Slovakia is pressing for a six-month rather than twelve-month rollover of the blacklist and for some delistings.

In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, beside Mark Rutte, called Leipzig "an attack using military grade material carried out by Russian operatives on European Union soil" and "the new normal". She said the Commission had received a Ukrainian payment request "worth several billion euro" for air defences including PAC-3 Patriot systems; member states are examining it, and it is "going in the right direction". The request attaches to a Patriot ask Greece and Spain declined on Tuesday, and money has not been the constraint on this file: the PAC-3 MSE line is under a seven-year contract sized to triple output by the end of 2030, and Washington's ambassador to NATO said in August that no production agreement would come before the winter — which leaves allied surplus as the near-term source. Rutte: "We've seen more drones and missiles crossing into our airspace along our eastern flank creating increased risk." Zelenskyy, after a call with Merz, said the two teams "are already finalizing the text of the Drone Deal", that they agreed to meet in person, and that "there will be new air defence packages from Germany this month".