Kremlin suspected of flying drones over Europe using Russian shadow fleet

Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Minimize to nav Mysterious drone flights that disrupted major European airports and flew over NATO member military bases hosting US nuclear weapons may be the work of a coordinated Kremlin campaign launched from Russian-linked commercial ships. That recent assessment from the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies used automatic identification system (AIS) maritime tracking data and other publicly available data to show how Russian-linked ships and “shadow fleet” vessels that transport sanctioned Russian oil were often located nearby during various drone incidents. The report suggests that the drone incidents—which impacted a dozen NATO member countries and Ireland between August 2024 and February 2026—also revealed the vulnerability of European air defenses against surveillance and harassment incursions by low-cost drones. The IISS report identified 144 drone sightings over Europe during that time period that were unlikely to involve hobbyist recreational drones or drone activity related to the war in Ukraine. About 48 percent of the sightings took place over military bases, 26 percent happened over critical infrastructure such as ports and energy or industrial facilities, and 18 percent occurred over civilian airports. Most occurred at night or in the early morning hours before sunrise, and the drones themselves were typically described in media reports as resembling “professional” or “military-style” drones. The think tank’s report does not claim that all drone sightings were attributable to Russian drones or were even real. But it describes the pattern of certain drone incursions as being “consistent with the Kremlin’s effort to probe allied defenses, test civilian-military response mechanisms and normalize low-level airspace violations below the threshold of an armed attack.” The only drone incident directly attributed to Russia came in February 2026, when the Swedish military confirmed spotting and subsequently jamming a drone that took off from the Russian signals intelligence vessel Zhigulevsk in Swedish territorial waters. The Russian drone launch took place while the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its escort ships were nearby during a visit to Sweden. But despite being the only confirmed example, the incident showed that Russian-linked ships have the capability to launch drones at sea for potential surveillance purposes. The drone lineup One possible drone candidate for ship-launched operations is the Merlin-VR, a fixed-wing drone developed a shipboard catapult system and recovered by parachute. It has the necessary flight range to enable a number of identified drone incursion incidents, while being capable of night operations and having the ability to spend time loitering over targets, according to the IISS report.