Ukraine has begun M&M's drone operation targeting Russian air travel - Atlantic reporter

Shuster said on Sept. 2 that one of his original sources had confirmed that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's warning a day earlier about Russian airspace becoming unsafe marked the start of the operation, codenamed M&M's.

“President Zelenskyy has officially announced the start of the operation known as M&Ms, which we reported on last month,” Shuster wrote on X. “One of the sources who initially told me about the plan confirmed to me this morning that this is it.”

In his evening address on Sept. 1, Zelenskyy warned international airlines, insurers and others using Russian airports that Ukrainian drone operations would increasingly affect Russian airspace.

“Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe,” Zelenskyy said. “Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation as such — not a single civilian aircraft. There will simply be drones in Russia's skies on a scale that has to be taken into account.”

He said Russian airspace would “effectively be closing” and urged airlines flying primarily to Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major Russian destinations to take the risk into account.

“Drone-infested skies are no place for civilian aviation,” Zelenskyy said.

What is Operation M&M's?

The Atlantic first reported on the secret Ukrainian plan on Aug. 20, citing two sources with direct knowledge of it.

The original plan envisioned sending swarms of as many as 1,000 small, inexpensive drones a night toward airports in and around Moscow, with the goal of forcing prolonged closures of Russian airspace and eventually prompting international airlines to stop flying to the Russian capital.

Ukraine hoped the disruption would further isolate Russian elites and create domestic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war, according to the Atlantic.

The proposed drones were to use AI-powered guidance based on map matching, allowing them to navigate and identify targets without relying on a remote pilot or communications links vulnerable to Russian electronic warfare.

The Atlantic reported that Zelenskyy initially had strong reservations about the plan because of the potential risk to civilian aviation. Officials behind the proposal suggested warning airlines in advance so they could avoid Russian airports before Ukrainian drone swarms arrived.

Planning for M&M's was halted in July following the dismissal of then-Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who had overseen preparations for the operation, according to the Atlantic.

Fedorov had assembled Ukrainian programmers to work on the AI guidance system and secured European financing to produce autonomous drones at scale, the newspaper reported.

At the time, one of the sources said the project could be revived by a new team but estimated that doing so could take around three months.

Shuster's latest statement indicates that the operation has now been revived, although neither he nor Zelenskyy provided details about its current scale or whether all elements of the original plan, including the use of AI-guided drones, remain unchanged.