Zelenskyy Tells Airlines to Avoid Russian Airspace, Which Is, Per the Drones, 'A Thing'

KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked the world’s airlines to avoid Russian airspace, which is a request that, in the specific, has never before been made by a head of state to a set of airplanes, and the reason, per the President, is that the sky over Russia is, in the specific, “effectively closing.”

The warning came as Ukraine expands its drone operations into Russia, which is the way a country describes the act of flying a very large number of small unmanned aircraft at a country that is, in the specific, much bigger than the aircraft, and much bigger than the sky they are in. Zelenskyy directed the message, in the specific, at the airlines that still fly to Russian airports, especially the ones that land in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which is the way you address a warning to the specific people it is, in the specific, about.

The phrase “there will simply be drones” is the phrase that does the work of the whole announcement, because it is the phrase that treats a sky full of drones as a weather condition. You do not plan a flight around weather in the way you plan a flight around a country that is shooting missiles at you. You check the forecast. And the forecast, in this case, is drones. The airline, in the specific, is being asked to look at the forecast and decide, in the specific, whether the forecast is a thing it can fly through.

The part of the story that the coverage puts in the second paragraph, and that belongs in the first, is that the airlines were, in the specific, already flying the route, and that the route was, in the specific, the route. Moscow is a hub. St. Petersburg is a city. The airplanes were, in the specific, in the sky, and the sky was, in the specific, shared, and the sharing was, in the specific, the part that is, in the specific, now ending.

The practical effect of a head of state telling the world’s airplanes to stay out of a country’s sky is that the country’s sky is, in the specific, now a place the world has to think about before it goes there, and the thinking is, in the specific, the part that was not, in the specific, part of the flight plan. The flight plan had a route. The route had an airspace. The airspace, per the President, is now a thing.

At press time, the airlines, in the specific, had not, in the specific, responded, which is the way the industry answers a question it is, in the specific, still calculating, and the sky over Russia is, in the specific, still where the sky is, and the drones are, in the specific, in it.