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Moscow’s air defenses can no longer keep up with Ukraine’s drone campaign, and the Kremlin is turning to the country’s companies for help.
A bill now before the State Duma offers Russian firms a long-asked-for tax break for the money they pour into shielding their plants, warehouses, and offices from drone strikes.
The catch sits in the fine print. Companies may only count the cost against their taxable profits if they hand the finished protective structures and the specialized equipment inside them to the state, free of charge, according to The Insider’s reading of draft legislation submitted this week.
The receiving bodies are the Defense Ministry, the National Guard (Rosgvardia), the FSB security service, the Emergency Situations Ministry, and volunteer formations attached to them. Any construction or hardware a business wants to deduct must sit on a site staffed by personnel from one of those agencies.
From a Finance Ministry no to a conditional yes
For most of the war, the Finance Ministry resisted letting private firms write off drone-defense spending at all. Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Sazanov signaled a shift at the Moscow Financial Forum on September 22, saying the ministry was preparing tax code changes to let companies account for the cost of defending facilities and repairing damage.
The version that reached parliament keeps the deduction, but ties it to transfer of ownership. The draft also carves out a value-added tax exemption for the free handover of goods, work, and services to the Defense Ministry, National Guard, FSB, and Emergency Situations Ministry “for purposes of protection from unmanned aerial apparatus,” according to RIA Novosti’s reporting on the government’s explanatory note.
Meals served to people inside the shelters would be exempt from VAT as well. The expense rules apply retroactively from January 1, 2026; the VAT changes kick in from October 1, 2026.
Why the pressure on companies is rising
The bill is the latest in a chain of measures pushing the cost of air defense onto Russian industry.
In late May, Moscow opened the door for private companies to buy heavy weapons, including anti-aircraft artillery, radars, and electronic warfare systems, to guard their own sites.
Then, on August 24, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree letting the government place critical infrastructure under temporary state management when owners fail to protect it. Rosimushchestvo, the federal property agency, or another designated party can take over company property if drone defenses are judged insufficient.
The private sector was already carrying most of the bill. Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center analyst Alexandra Prokopenko estimated that Russian companies spent around 100 billion rubles on drone defense in 2024, with 2025 costs likely twice as high, while insurance payouts across the whole of 2025 totaled only about 1 billion rubles.
Ukraine’s strike campaign has not eased. Kyiv’s drones have hit oil refineries across European Russia and knocked out large stretches of refining capacity for weeks at a time. Ukraine has struck more than two dozen Wildberries facilities since mid-July, according to The Moscow Times, and investigative outlet iStories estimates total damages to the retailer’s properties and seller inventory at 878 billion rubles (around $10.5 billion).
