Mounting Ukrainian strikes, orders from the Kremlin are forcing industries to take responsibility for protecting themselves
Etienne Note: One of the scams of “government” is that the “government” is supposed to be protecting you. Here we have Russia failing to the point of where it is now REQUIRING businesses to buy their own private military defense. I frequently point out on podcasts that when I lived in Memphis, TN almost every private business had to purchase private security because the police were so notoriously inefficient. Why don’t the businesses just purchase private security and not pay the monopoly provider at all? Now Russia is making the same point against national governments. To understand how we could have private military defense without “government,” please see my article: Assassination Markets to Private Military Defense - Protecting the Country in a Future without "Government"
By Thomas Grove and Daria Matviichuk, The Wall Street Journal
When a Ukrainian drone struck one of Russia’s biggest steel producers earlier this year, the company’s owner and the country’s richest businessman, Alexei Mordashov, brought in an air-defense system to protect the firm’s biggest mill on the outskirts of Moscow, people familiar with the matter said.
The move by steel giant Severstal was an example of how Russia’s private industries are increasingly having to fend for themselves as Ukrainian strikes intensify. The escalating threat is rippling through the economy, disrupting businesses and changing job requirements, making security guards and even postal workers part of the drone defenses.
Etienne note: To round out the picture for this summary, the following section complements it with additional details on the scale, cost, and labor impact of this shift, drawn from other outlets that have covered the same trend.
The scale of the shift to private defense
The pressure on Russian businesses is coming from two directions at once. On one side, Ukrainian strikes have intensified against industrial and logistics sites. On the other, the Kremlin itself has moved to formalize the burden: a government decree has warned that companies failing to adequately protect their own facilities could face temporary state seizure. Alexandra Prokopenko, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, described the shift bluntly: "The Kremlin is shifting more and more of the burden of protection to the shoulders of private business."
The financial scale of this shift is becoming measurable. Russian companies spent more than 440 million rubles (roughly $5.3 million) on counter-drone systems in the first half of 2026 alone — nearly seven times the amount spent over the same period a year earlier, according to Russia's state news agency TASS and data from the business newspaper Vedomosti. Because companies aren't required to disclose this kind of spending, the real total is likely higher. Orders are concentrated among oil-sector companies, port operators, and warehouse owners — facilities that, notably, are not always formally classified as critical infrastructure, leaving their owners to absorb the added cost entirely on their own.
Some firms have opted to lease rather than build: two people close to Russia's business community say certain companies now pay the Defense Ministry directly to rent air-defense systems staffed by military instructors. Others are building in-house capacity, as Severstal did after the strike on its mill.
The shift is also reshaping ordinary labor markets. Job postings on the Russian platform Avito are now seeking security guards specifically trained to spot and shoot down drones, with one position near Moscow advertising a starting salary of 240,000 rubles (nearly $3,000) a month plus bonuses. The retailer Wildberries has installed steel netting around some of its warehouses, and the government has gone as far as authorizing postal workers to carry weapons and ammunition while on their routes.
The trend traces back to a direct order from President Vladimir Putin in late May, directing officials to develop measures for protecting private businesses from drone attacks — an acknowledgment, in effect, that state air defenses alone are no longer sufficient to cover the country's expanding list of exposed commercial targets.
Sources:
- South Front, "Russian Private Sector Expands Air Defense Role With Interceptor Drones Purchases."
- Clash Report, "Russian Firms Lease Air Defenses, Hire Gunners to Counter Ukrainian Drones," citing The Wall Street Journal.
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