A gunman on a motorcycle shot a Russian Aerospace Forces officer twice in Saratov Oblast on the morning of 3 September, Radio Svoboda reported. Telegram channels identify the wounded man as Nikolai Varpakhovich, the major general who commands Russia's heavy bomber division at Engels. Ukraine's security service and prosecutors named that officer a suspect three days earlier over the missile strike on Kyiv's main children's hospital.

Ukraine's services have pursued senior Russian officers in the rear, sometimes unofficially claiming the operation and sometimes saying nothing at all. Bombings have killed at least three generals in and around Moscow since December 2024, and a fourth died in a Moscow restaurant blast whose target Russia has never established. Nobody has claimed the Engels shooting yet, and Ukrainian officials have not commented on it.

Two shots outside Engels, then the motorcycle was gone

The attack happened in Probuzhdeniye, a settlement next to the city of Engels in Russia's Volga region. The Russian Telegram channel Shot said the officer was leaving a shop when an unknown man on a motorcycle fired twice, hitting his face and his body. Another Russian channel, Mash, reported that the gunman rode up to a detached house, that one bullet struck the abdomen and the other the head, and that surgeons removed both. The accounts of the spot and the wounds do not match.

The officer's driver was hit as well, got away, and called an ambulance himself. The attacker wore a helmet and fled, and doctors in Saratov operated before preparing the officer for a flight to Moscow. 

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The regional branch of Russia's Investigative Committee stated that someone had attempted to kill a serviceman and that the victim was hospitalized. Investigators stated they had recovered cartridge cases and bullets at the scene and opened a case for attempted murder and illegal weapons trafficking. They released no name.

The  Telegram channel Dosye Shpiona, possibly linked to the Ukrainian special services, named the victim as Nikolai Varpakhovich, commander of the 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division of Russia's long-range aviation. Meduza noted that no official source has confirmed this. Agentstvo reported that Varpakhovich comes from Ryazan, served earlier as deputy head of the 43rd flight-crew training center, and has lived in Saratov Oblast since at least 2024, with documents listing an apartment in Engels and a house in Probuzhdeniye.

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Ukraine named him a suspect on 31 August

The SBU and the Prosecutor General's Office announced an in absentia suspicion against Varpakhovich on 31 August. Investigators say he issued the combat order for the strike that hit Kyiv's Okhmatdyt children's hospital on 8 July 2024, killing two people and injuring 32. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed that day's missiles went at military-industrial sites and airbases.

It was his second notice this year. Ukraine charged him in June over a 2022 cruise-missile strike on an Odesa apartment block that killed eight, and prosecutors had notified his division's commander of suspicion back in June 2023.

Ukraine formally notified the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on 2 September that Russian airspace is unsafe for civilian flights because of increased military activity, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said. The letter behind the notification asks the organization to urge its member states to stop civil flights over Russia altogether, ZN reported.

ICAO, the UN aviation agency, cannot close Russian airspace or order carriers to reroute. European and US airlines already avoid Russia's airspace, while carriers from China, Türkiye, and the Gulf states have kept flying through it. Those remaining airlines must assess the safety of flying amid drone and air defense operations. Drone alerts during reported Ukrainian attacks have repeatedly shut Russian airports and delayed hundreds of flights.

The notification follows a 1 September warning by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who told airlines, insurers, and other aviation stakeholders that Russian skies were becoming unsafe as Ukrainian drones reached deeper into the country.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's Foreign Ministry would pass information about the risks to international organizations. The letter to ICAO came from another office—Mykola Kalashnyk, Ukraine's minister for recovery, infrastructure, and transport, whose portfolio covers aviation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Zelenskyy's statement amounted to "a bid for state terrorism" and that Moscow would find a way to respond if civilian "tragedies" followed.

Sybiha urged airlines to avoid Russian airspace and said the notice was meant to prevent unintended incidents, arguing that Moscow was failing to disclose the dangers its war had created. He invoked Ukraine’s inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the provision that recognizes states’ right to defend themselves against an armed attack. The foreign minister further stated that the war was “returning home to Russia.”

In its separate statement, ICAO warned of rising threats to civil aviation worldwide. It did not mention Russia, endorse Ukraine’s assessment, or say Kyiv’s notification had prompted it.

The UN aviation body identified long-range weapons, drones, navigation-signal interference, and advanced air-defense systems as growing dangers to civilian aircraft. It reiterated that international aviation law prohibits the use of weapons against them.

ICAO urged member states to assess airspace under their control, share threat intelligence quickly, and improve military-civilian coordination.

Russian airports were already facing repeated closures

Russian airspace has not been legally or completely closed. The disruption has instead taken the form of temporary restrictions at individual airports.

From 5–7 May 2026, restrictions during reported Ukrainian attacks delayed more than 450 flights at Moscow airports, while limits at Vnukovo remained in place for nearly 18 hours.

On 6 July 2025, Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport canceled 171 flights, while airports in five other cities suspended operations. During an earlier wave on 22 May 2025, Domodedovo halted flights four times in one day and Sheremetyevo three times, while Vnukovo and Zhukovsky also restricted operations.

Airports in Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, and Tambov were temporarily closed during a 27 May attack in which Moscow claimed 99 drones were intercepted. Two days later, another alert delayed 20 arrivals and 14 departures at Vnukovo, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels claimed.