Overwhelmed by Ukraine’s Drones, Russia Tells Businesses to Defend Themselves

Mounting Ukrainian strikes, orders from the Kremlin are forcing industries to take responsibility for protecting themselves

By Thomas Grove and Daria Matviichuk

The Wall Street Journal

Sept. 25, 2026 10:00 pm ET

Original article contains numerous links

Smoke rises from a Russian warehouse following a Ukrainian drone attack. Social Media/UGC/Reuters

UGC/Reuters/ Quick Summary

 -- Russian businesses are increasingly forced to defend themselves as Ukrainian drone strikes intensify and the Kremlin mandates self-protection.

 -- A Kremlin decree warned that companies failing to take responsibility for their protection against Ukrainian drones could face state seizure.

 -- Russian businesses are leasing air-defense systems, building their own and hiring gunners to shoot down incoming drones.

This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

When a Ukrainian drone struck one of Russia’s biggest steel producers earlier this year, the company’s owner and the country’s richest businessman, Alexei Mordashov, brought in an air-defense system to protect the firm’s biggest mill on the outskirts of Moscow, people familiar with the matter said.

The move by steel giant Severstal was an example of how Russia’s private industries are increasingly having to fend for themselves as Ukrainian strikes intensify. The escalating threat is rippling through the economy, disrupting businesses and changing job requirements, making security guards and even postal workers part of the drone defenses.

It isn’t all by choice.

Moscow has mandated that businesses take steps to protect themselves. The Kremlin warned in an official decree last month that any company that doesn’t take responsibility for its protection against Ukrainian drones could face temporary state seizure.

Now, businesses across Russia are leasing air-defense systems from defense firms or building their own, said people close to Russia’s business elite and defense sector. Job advertisements show that some are even hiring gunners to shoot down drones.

“The Kremlin is shifting more and more of the burden of protection to the shoulders of private business,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a senior analyst at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a think tank based in Berlin.

A satellite image of a Wildberries warehouse in Russia after Ukrainian strikes. Vantor/AFP/Getty Images

Russia’s Finance Ministry suggested this month that it would work out tax breaks to compensate for the money private companies spend on drone defenses or repairs after attacks.

Severstal, which makes steel for Russia’s defense industry, including air-defense systems, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ukraine has ramped up its drone production, enabling its military to carry out massive barrages deep inside Russian territory. Since March, Ukrainian drones have carried out some 200 strikes on Russian refineries and hit at least 36 logistics centers, including those of Russia’s biggest online retailers, Ozon and Wildberries, according to Rochan Consulting, a Poland-based firm that specializes in defense. Wildberries has started using steel netting around some of its warehouses to defend against drones.

Russia’s enormous size once helped it defend against the invading armies of Hitler and Napoleon. Now it is a vulnerability, spreading its available air defenses thin across a landmass that is difficult to defend in its entirety.

As a result, the Russian government is making defending against drones everyone’s problem—not just a matter for the military. Earlier this month, the government issued a decree allowing Russian postal workers to carry weapons and ammunition to take down drones, without specifying exactly what kinds of weapons they will be able to use.

The threat is also affecting one of the country’s most prevalent professions: security guards, which became a fixture for many businesses following the fall of the Soviet Union in the rough-and-tumble 1990s, when business disputes sometimes devolved into shootouts. Security guards are now also expected to be able to shoot down drones.

A burning Wildberries facility. Stringer/EPA/Shutterstock

On Avito, a Russian site similar to Craigslist, companies are looking for guards who can patrol sites, watch the skies, spot drones and shoot them down. One job ad in the Moscow area offers salaries starting at 240,000 rubles a month, equivalent to nearly $3,000, plus signing and performance bonuses. Jobs guarding the Crimean Bridge—connecting Russia with the Ukrainian peninsula it annexed in 2014—can pay more than twice that. Some require a one-year contract with the Defense Ministry and promise that workers won’t be sent to the front lines.

Some businesses are trying to capitalize on the drone defense needs. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which had numerous Western clients before Russia’s full-scale war with Ukraine, has entered the market. On its website, it advertises an antidrone package that detects and classifies incoming drones through artificial intelligence and engages them if hooked up to the right air-defense system. 

The country’s insurance market is still trying to work out how to deal with drone attacks. Russia still hasn’t officially declared war—describing it instead as a “special military operation”—opening the way for force majeure. The gray area between what can and can’t be insured and reimbursed is enormous.

While some claims are honored, many aren’t, said Prokopenko. Russians are now buying new drone insurance packages that are being offered on top of car or house insurance. Last week, the Russian central bank promised to inject $2 billion into the country’s chief reinsurer to help it pay for rising claims from drone attacks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Alexander Shokhin, of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Russian Government/Planet Pix/ZUMA Press

Ukraine has suffered similar problems. The government helps private businesses insure against military risks up to nearly $700,000 in the most dangerous regions. Private owners of critical infrastructure can likewise request electronic warfare equipment as interceptors run out, though it is operated by the military, which integrates these systems into the country’s overall air-defense system.

In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, also known as the Oligarchs’ Union. In Putin’s wood-paneled office, they discussed how businesses, the government and the Defense Ministry could work more closely together to provide businesses with the weapons needed to protect industrial sites from attacks.

“Large enterprises certainly care about protecting both their own facilities and the areas where they operate—at least, all responsible major companies do,” Shokhin said, in a video posted on the Kremlin website. “However, certain issues require resolution, like working out a mechanism for supplying weaponry.”

Putin said he would look into it, but coordination between entrepreneurs, the Defense Ministry and the country’s sprawling arms sector has remained ad hoc, the people said.

Businesses are taking different approaches to obtaining air defenses. Some are paying the Defense Ministry to rent an air-defense system, with monthly payments required as instructors man the system, said two people close to Russia’s business community.

Other businesses have tried a cheaper route of paying engineers from defense firms to help them build their own systems, sometimes copying foreign ones, including the P1-SUN drone interceptor system that was created by the Ukrainian company Skyfall, one of the people said.

In the first half of 2026, businesses spent more than 440 million rubles on counterdrone systems, nearly seven times as much as they did in the same period the previous year, according to state news agency Tass. The actual number is likely higher because businesses aren’t required to report expenditures on drone defenses.

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