Russia has stripped much of the air defense from its far-north bases, satellite imagery sourced by RFE/RL shows. Some units appear to have shifted toward areas Ukraine's drones can now reach. One analyst ties the shift to a war that forces Moscow to guard more ground with fewer launchers and crews.
Russia's Arctic missile sites emptied out
Around the Rogachevo air base on Russia's Novaya Zemlya islands, most air-defense equipment has disappeared from a missile site operating there since at least August 2015. A 6 July image records the change. Launchers and radars stood there in September 2019. By this July, the site read close to bare.
The submarine city lost much of its shield
In Severodvinsk, on the White Sea, Russia builds and repairs its nuclear submarines. Several decades-old air-defense positions around the city now appear vacant. Satellite images show roughly 24 S-300 and S-400 launchers gone from specialized positions around the city.
At least some of the missing launchers appear to have been redeployed. New batteries have appeared beside likelier targets.
By the Saratov refinery in Russia's southwest, an empty field filled with launch vehicles, their tubes raised. Drones have struck that refinery repeatedly since early 2025. In Moscow, crews have seized park land in the capital to host S-400 batteries these past weeks.
Open-source investigations estimate that about 60% of Russia's S-300 and S-400 systems have left their pre-2022 positions. Air defense has mostly stayed around the country's nuclear silos and its long-range bomber bases.
A professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, Katarzyna Zysk, reads the far-north drawdown as "a growing mismatch between the targets Russia must protect and its available launchers, interceptors, and trained personnel." The pullback suggests Moscow sees no big strike coming against the far north, and judges it can cut protection there without unacceptable risk.
