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Russia has brought much-needed air defense closer to home Putin‘s Valdai Palace, Radio Liberty reported.
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The palace is said to be the residence of Putin’s girlfriend and children.
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The measure follows a sustained campaign of Ukrainian drone attacks over western Russia.
Russia appears to be beefing up its air defenses to better protect one of President Vladimir Putin’s palaces.
Russia has moved another air defense installation near Putin’s lakeside Valdai Palace to protect it from Ukrainian drones. Radio Liberty reported.
It concluded that the installation was released in March 2024.
The Pantsir-S1 system is located on Ryabinovy Island, the news agency reports, about 5.3 kilometers from Putin’s famous Valdai palace complex.
According to research agency Proekt, The Valdai Palace has been the residence of Putin’s girlfriend, Alina Kabaeva, since early 2023.
Putin has denied having anything to do with the property, but an investigation alleged presidential ties to the sprawling luxury complex in 2021 by late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
According to the outlet, the Pantsir-S1 spotted by Radio Liberty is one of at least seven anti-aircraft installations within range of the palace.
It is not clear exactly when they appeared, but most have been spotted since the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Business Insider was unable to independently verify the report.
An analysis by the Institute for the Study of Warwho mentioned the Pantsir site in Valdai, said Ukraine’s ongoing drone strike campaign had pressured Russia to redistribute “limited” air defense assets to valuable locations.
“The Russian military apparently lacks the required conventional air defense systems to protect all key facilities in western Russia and is even struggling to cover key potential targets in reportedly well-defended areas of Russia,” the ISW wrote.
Ukraine has largely focused on The Russian oil infrastructure And military base in a series of drone attacks that intensified earlier this year.
In such an attack, on January 17, Ukraine sent a barrage of drones against an oil storage facility in St. Petersburg.
On the way, one of the drones penetrated the airspace above the Valdai Palace, Ukrainian officials claimed at the time.
A few days later, the Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU said that Western Russia was struggling to find technical means to deter small, slow-moving objects such as drones.
VChK-OGPU is a widely read channel that claims to have sources within the Russian State Security Service.
The channel also reported that since the beginning of the war, virtually all Pantsir-S1s in the region had been deployed to protect what they considered a particularly important facility in Valdai.
According to the ISW, the resulting tensions have had a domino effect on Russian companies and civilian regions.
“The continued pressure on Russia’s air defense organization has led certain regional authorities to explicitly state that Russian companies and local governments cannot rely on Russian air defense at the federal level and must provide their own anti-drone capabilities,” the report said.
Russia has also waged a devastating campaign of drone attacks that decimated Ukraine’s electricity grid.
This is thought to be a result of the near-stalemate on the front, with both sides preferring to launch major attacks rather than make significant territorial gains.
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