Anti-drone nets have been strung over truck parking areas in the Valdai district of Novgorod region. Oleg Kashin published photographs of the barriers June 7 in his Telegram channel, saying readers had sent him the images.
The independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo analyzed the photographs and concluded they were taken on a highway roughly 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence at Valdai. Military analysts told Agentstvo that such nets are used at the front and can protect against small drones or munitions dropped from unmanned aerial vehicles.
Ruslan Leviev, founder of the investigative project Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), suggested the nets “are not there to protect the trucks from drones — as at the front — but the other way around: to protect against the trucks.”
Leviev recalled that in Ukraine’s Spider Web operation, drones were concealed inside trucks. As the vehicles approached their targets — military airfields — the trucks’ roofs opened, the drones flew out, and struck.
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