Russian bank staff and branches could be joining the fight against Ukrainian drone attacks under an ambitious plan approved by the country’s lower house of parliament.
The banks would bear the cost of installing electronic jamming systems on their premises while selected employees would shoot down incoming drones, according to the draft bill passed in its third and final reading Tuesday.
Since there are banks in almost every town, their incorporation in air defenses could help expand Russia’s cover.
The bill, which state news agency Interfax said was first presented last August and later expanded in scope, must still be approved by the upper house Federation Council and signed by President Vladimir Putin before coming into force, The AP news reported.
Russia is finding it hard to protect its large land mass from a growing number of attacks by increasingly sophisticated Ukrainian long-range drones. Smaller drones are also holding back Russian troops along the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line and disrupting the supply lines of Russia’s invading army, Western analysts and officials say.
As the intensity and depth of Ukrainian drone attacks have increased, Russian authorities have encouraged businesses to contribute to protective measures against aerial strikes.
Russian banks are not known to have been a prime target for Ukrainian drones over the four years of war that followed Moscow's invasion. The plan encompasses Russia’s central bank and other top institutions, including majority state-owned Sberbank.
With little detail included in the bill, it has raised questions about how such a project would work. The widespread installation of equipment and training of staff in how to use it would require a huge organizational effort.
With Putin keen to shield Russians from the war, the plan could work against his efforts by involving regular citizens in it and making the consequences of the invasion more visible.
The proposed measure reflects growing problems for Russia against Ukraine’s increasingly sophisticated drones, according to Thomas Withington, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
The draft bill “seems to indicate that ... military-level drone defense capabilities in Russia are failing, because if they were working you wouldn’t need to do that,” he told The Associated Press.
“This situation is not improving for Russia,” he said, noting that Moscow is battling to keep up with Ukrainian drone innovations.
The measure seeks to “try and offload some of the burden of drone protection to the non-military, non-law enforcement sectors,” which are under strain, he said.
Under the bill that passed in its second and third reading by the Duma, bank employees may jam or intercept drone control signals, and damage or destroy uncrewed aerial, underwater and ground vehicles threatening their facilities, without waiting for a response from security services.
“Jamming will be used to make it more difficult for (the drones) to target and attack the relevant targets,” Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, told Russian media outlet RBK. “Plus, we’ll also use means to shoot down these drones, thereby protecting the relevant targets.”
Each organization will determine which employees are authorized to deploy the measures.
