A Ukrainian soldier of the 24th brigade prepares equipment of FPV drones as the Russia-Ukraine war continues.
Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Russia has passed a law authorizing its central bank and other financial institutions to repel drone attacks with their own defense systems, as the country struggles to defend against Ukrainian strikes.
The law, passed by Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday, will allow staff at Russia’s central bank to be armed and to operate the systems used to down unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) attacks without the involvement of special forces.
Ukraine’s military has increasingly opted for longer-range drone strikes, thereby stretching Russia’s capacity to defend the skies over its vast territory.
Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, the Russian Cash Collection Association — the country’s largest carrier of cash and valuables — and Special Postal Service, which handles the delivery of classified and top-secret state correspondence, are among the other institutions to be allowed to oversee their own drone defense operations, news agency RBC reported Tuesday.
Employees will be “empowered to prevent the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles, underwater and surface vessels and apparatus, unmanned vehicles, and other automated unmanned systems,” RBC reported, citing the law passed in the State Duma.
This right may be used to repel an attack on protected facilities, the report said, or to repel the threat of an attack on employees or other persons located at these sites.
Attacks could be thwarted by jamming or converting drone remote control signals, interfering with their control panels, and damaging or destroying the drones.
Russia and Ukraine both deny deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure as part of their ongoing war, which began in Feb. 2022. However, there have been multiple instances of attacks on critical infrastructure and facilities in both countries, which have also been subject to cyber warfare.
A man walks near the headquarters of the Russian Central Bank on the day of a meeting, held to set its benchmark interest rate, in Moscow, Russia, September 12, 2025.
Ramil Sitdikov | Reuters
Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets Anatoly Aksakov, one of the authors of the new legislation, told RBC Radio that anti-drone defense systems will be located near key facilities and that employees will be issued weapons.
“Firstly, jamming will be used to make it more difficult for [the UAVs] to target and attack the relevant targets, … Plus, we’ll also use means to shoot down these drones, thereby protecting the relevant targets,” he said, adding that institutions would pay for the drone defense systems themselves.
“If it’s the central bank, then the central bank will pay; if it’s Sberbank, then Sberbank will pay,” Aksakov was quoted as saying.
With the U.S. focused on its own military operation against Iran, efforts to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table for peace talks look to have stalled as the scale of the conflict appears to have escalated.
Russia said on Tuesday that its government had warned U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to evacuate diplomats and American citizens from Kyiv as Moscow was planning to launch fresh strikes on the Ukrainian capital.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “officially informed” Washington that Russia would be launching “systematic and consistent strikes” against Ukrainian military facilities — with a focus on facilities for designing, manufacturing, and programming drones —and what Moscow called “decision-making centers,” in a call with Rubio on Monday, according to the Russian government.
CNBC reached out to the U.S. and Ukrainian governments for comment.
— CNBC’s Chloe Taylor contributed reporting to this story.
