Ukraine shuts down Russian airspace with blistering attacks as Putin’s allies tell him to stop war

We've covered endlessly on this show how Ukraine has been targeting oil infrastructure, weapons factories, ammunition dumps.

It has closed Russian airspace in the past, but rather than being a deliberate target, that seems to have been a side effect of its other strikes.

When the skies over Moscow and Saint Petersburg are full of Ukrainian drones, the airports have to pause operations because it's too dangerous, because the drones are in the skies, because Russian air defense is firing.

This seems to signal a new focus for Ukraine.

Zelensky said he wasn't targeting civil aviation directly and not an individual aircraft would be targeted.

But in a very stark targeted message, message both to airliners and their insurers and everyone who uses, uh, Russian civilian airspace, he said that airspace is now completely unsafe.

There's a report in The Atlantic Magazine suggesting that this is Operation M&M's, an operation code named M&M's, like the, uh, like the chocolate sweets, that Zelensky has authorized, and that this was first proposed to him in January.

The idea being to use swarms of AI-enabled powered autonomous drones that can seek their own targets to close Russia's major airports.

And Zelensky has said in his nighttime address that he's focusing on Moscow and President Putin's hometown of Saint Petersburg.

The report in The Atlantic Magazine, which came out before Zelensky announced this new focus, suggesting that this is designed to target Russia's elites, those people who can afford to fly internationally or even fly domestically from those airports to try and further isolate them, isolate Russia, and heap the pressure on President Putin to finally come to the negotiating table in some semblance of good faith.

Now, what have we seen so far? It's having an effect.

Within hours of Zelensky making that announcement, flights were canceled, grounded, some turned back in midair.

Now, from Europe's point of view, there's on- it's only really Turkey that still flies into Russia.

So Russian passengers or people wanting to fly into Russia inevitably have to transit through Turkey or to travel from, uh, countries east or south of Russia.

But already appearing to have an effect.

This is not instead of Ukraine's other long-range targeting, it is as well as.

And over the last week, we've seen that steady drumbeat of successful Ukrainian long-range strikes.

On Friday, they hit the Slavneft Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl.

That's 450 miles inside Russia, and a Tupolev 95 reportedly destroyed at the Engels Airbase.

The Tu-95, uh, the swept back long-range nuclear-capable strategic bomber, that was hit 350 miles inside Russia.

Uh, on Sunday, some 60 drones reportedly hit the Krychi Oil Refinery in Leningrad.

That's about 500 miles inside Russian territory.

And a missile, uh, plant factory in Belgorod.

That's just over the border from Kharkiv.

On Monday, we saw a Wildberries warehouse hit in Yekaterinburg.