Can Ukrainian Drone Shoot Down Putin's Plane?

• 7.10.2024, 18:43

We are checking the version of the Russian media.

Russian dictator Putin has stopped flying to Sochi out of fear for his own life after drone attacks on objects in the city, the Russian publication “Agentstvo” reported, citing sources.

Can Ukrainian UAVs really pose a threat to the Russian dictator's plane? Charter97.org asked this question to the Ukrainian military-political observer of the “Information Resistance” group Oleksandr Kovalenko:

— I will start with the distance from the nearest zone of probable launch of Ukrainian drones to Sochi. If we are talking about the Kherson region, then this is about 700 kilometers, if we are talking about the Zaporizhzhya region — 500 kilometers.

When drones are launched from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, at a certain point, even over temporarily occupied territories, they begin to be recorded by air defense systems. This is not a surprise factor — they are recorded.

The average speed of a UAV is 180 km/h. It takes about three hours to fly 500 kilometers to Sochi. And here the question arises: can they warn Flight 1 three hours in advance by recording a Ukrainian drone that is heading to Sochi? Of course they can.

I don’t think that the reason Putin stopped flying to Sochi is Ukrainian drones. I have serious doubts about this.

If Ukraine had, for example, ballistic missiles with a range of 1,000 km or even cruise missiles with a range of up to 700 km, then in that case, yes, we could say that there is a certain risk. But if we are talking about drones, a rather slow target, then the question is different: to shoot down or not to shoot down.

Russian air defense in matters of destroying Ukrainian drones, as we have seen recently, to put it mildly, does not demonstrate a particularly high level of effectiveness, but an aircraft at a speed of 700-800 km/h will easily escape from a drone, having received a warning of 1-2 hours.