The Atlantic: Zelensky was offered to hit Moscow airports with swarms of AI drones to force Putin to sit at the negotiating table

Earlier this year, Ukrainian officials presented President Volodymyr Zelensky with an expanded plan for attacks on Russia. In addition to strikes on Russian military bases, refineries, supply lines and logistics centers, officials wanted to launch waves of drones equipped with artificial intelligence systems at Moscow airports.

This was told to The Atlantic by two sources directly familiar with the plan.

The plan envisioned swarms of autonomous drones with AI-based navigation systems that would independently search for and attack targets without the guidance of a human pilot. Similar systems have been tested in recent years by various countries, including the United States.

The drones were supposed to use an AI-based technology known as map matching. In practice, this works like this: the drone receives a map of the route and a photo of the target, and during the flight its camera compares what it sees with this data. When the AI identifies the desired target, the drone automatically navigates to it and explodes — without confirmation from the operator.

When officials presented the plan to Zelensky this winter, he expressed concern. The president feared that a drone strike on a civilian plane in Moscow could be viewed as “piracy”, especially if people were injured or killed. At the same time, Zelensky, seeking to increase pressure on Russia and restart peace talks, allowed preparations for the operation to continue into the spring and early summer.

By mid-spring, the plan to force a longer closure of Moscow’s airports had progressed so far that it was codenamed M&Ms, a reference to the multitude of small, cheap, and nearly identical drones that would be needed for the mission. To overcome Russian air defenses, the operation would require sending up to 1 000 drones each night to airports in and around Moscow, one of the sources said.

What went wrong?

According to both sources, planning for the operation was halted in July when Zelensky unexpectedly fired its chief developer, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

As the architect of Ukraine’s military drone program, Fedorov has been working on the plan for much of this year, keeping it a secret even from some of his closest aides. He helped assemble a team of Ukrainian programmers to develop an AI-based navigation system and secured funding from Ukraine’s European allies to mass-produce the autonomous drones, two sources said.

The publicationʼs source hopes that the new Defense Minister Yevhen Khmara will continue the project: "Technically it is possible. But it will take about three months."

What Ukraine says

A spokesman for Zelensky declined to comment. Meanwhile, another official in the Presidentʼs Office denied the existence of a plan to attack Moscow airports with swarms of AI drones, calling it "complete nonsense".

According to him, Ukraine has long been trying to close Russian airports, and Ukrainian attacks have repeatedly forced them to temporarily cease operations. At the same time, Ukraine does not have sufficiently accurate long-range weapons to attack airports without significant risk to civilians.

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