Ukrainian drone attack forces Russian commercial plane to divert to Estonia, passengers forbidden from disembarking
A passenger plane carrying Russians en route to St. Petersburg was forced to make an emergency landing in Estonia early on Aug. 24 due to a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia, the Postimees newspaper reported.
"The aircraft was rerouted to land in Tallinn, as it could not land at Pulkovo Airport due to a temporary closure," said Margot Holts, Head of Communications and Marketing at Tallinn Airport.
Overnight on Aug. 24, Ukrainian drones struck a gas terminal in Russia's Leningrad Oblast and an oil refinery in Samara Oblast. A source in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) confirmed to the Kyiv Independent that the agency was behind the attack on the liquefied natural gas terminal in Leningrad Oblast.
The aircraft, operated by Egyptian carrier AlMasria Universal Airlines, had departed from Sharm El Sheikh and landed in Tallinn at 5:33 a.m. local time. It was able to continue its journey to St. Petersburg nearly six hours later.
According to Holts, passengers and crew were not permitted to leave the plane during its time at Tallinn Airport.
Kyiv's drone campaign, which has increasingly disrupted civilian air travel in Russia, is part of Ukraine's broader strategy to undermine Russia's logistics far beyond the front line.
In the first months of 2025, Ukrainian drone attacks reportedly forced Russia to suspend airport operations over 200 times, a record number since the start of the full-scale war.
