Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, passed on Tuesday a law that is as revealing as it is extraordinary: trained bank employees across the country will be authorised to help defend Russian airspace against Ukrainian drone attacks — installing electronic jamming systems on their premises and, where necessary, shooting down incoming unmanned aircraft.
The draft legislation, confirmed by the state-run TASS news agency, passed its third and final reading in the lower house on May 27. It covers the Bank of Russia — Russia’s central bank — as well as leading commercial lenders, including the majority state-owned Sberbank. Each institution would bear the cost of installing the equipment and select which staff members receive training.
Under the bill, employees may jam or intercept drone control signals, and damage or destroy unmanned aerial, underwater and ground vehicles threatening their facilities — without waiting for instructions from Russia’s formal security services.
Why banks? Russia is fighting to protect a vast territory from an escalating number of attacks by increasingly long-range Ukrainian drones, which have found repeated success striking critical energy infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. With bank branches present in almost every town, their incorporation into air defence would dramatically expand the geographic reach of Russia’s protection grid — at no cost to the defence budget.
Speaking to Russian media outlet RBK, Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, said: “Jamming will alone will probably make it more difficult for [the drones] to target and attack the relevant targets… Plus, we’ll also use means to shoot down these drones, thereby protecting the relevant targets.”
The bill was first presented in August last year but was significantly expanded in scope as the drone threat grew. It must still be approved by the upper Federation Council and signed by President Vladimir Putin before becoming law.
The legislation specifies that the measures are needed to protect bank facilities, including those in the four eastern Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed but does not fully control — regions it classes as the “new constituent entities of the Russian Federation.”
The move marks a notable departure from President Putin’s long-running effort to shield ordinary Russians from the direct consequences of a war now in its fifth year. It also underscores the scale of the challenge facing Russia’s military as Ukrainian drones grow in range, frequency and sophistication.
International context: The law comes as EU defence ministers approved a landmark new military mission along Europe’s southern border, deploying more than 600 additional forces to block weapons trafficking from Libya and Tunisia — the EU’s most significant militarised border operation in the Mediterranean since the 2015 migration crisis. Separately, Norway this week formally joined France’s nuclear deterrent in a historic bilateral defence deal that shifts critical European strategic architecture away from US extended deterrence.
Sources: Al Jazeera (May 27, 2026); TASS state news agency (via Al Jazeera); Reuters (May 27, 2026); CNBC (May 27, 2026).
Written by Carlos Mendez, Americas Correspondent
Carlos Mendez
Carlos Mendez covers Latin American politics, economics, and regional affairs from Mexico City to Buenos Aires.