Imagery shows new Valdai air defences

TLDR

• RFE/RL and OSINT analyst jembob report about 16 new air-defence towers within 50 kilometres of Putin's Valdai residence.¹²
• Identified positions around Valdai now exceed 50, up from 27 reported in April.¹³⁴
• The towers' armament is unconfirmed: Pantsir or Tor systems are assumed, and the northern arc is unmapped.¹²

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Russian service and OSINT analyst jembob (@jembobineuse on X) report that a further ring of air-defence towers has been built within 50 kilometres of Vladimir Putin's residence at Valdai, in Novgorod Oblast.¹² The new towers, more than 15 by RFE/RL's count and about 16 by jembob's, stand mainly south of the residence, on the side facing Ukraine.¹² The outer ring runs through the Khotilovo military air base, which RFE/RL describes as Putin's alternate airfield with a dedicated rail branch to the residence, and along the Vyshny Volochyok Reservoir.¹ A laboratory complex on Lisiy Island in the reservoir was the subject of an RFE/RL investigation on 3 September, which linked it, allegedly, to Russia's biological weapons programme.¹

Why it matters: cataloguing fixed structures such as towers across repeated imagery is a repeatable open-source method, and RFE/RL says it published an interactive map with the supporting satellite images, so individual positions can be checked.¹ The running count also shows how fast the footprint is growing: earlier RFE/RL reporting, cited by LIGA.net and Ukrainska Pravda, counted 12 positions in 2025 and 27 by April 2026.³⁴

Driving the news:

• jembob's 25 October thread counts about 16 short-range air-defence towers "so far" and a total of 49 or 50, and warns that the towers are "not yet confirmed".²
• The sources differ on timing: RFE/RL dates the new construction to October, while jembob's post says September.¹²
• RFE/RL says the towers will probably host Pantsir or Tor systems, and that no positions have been found in the northern part of the ring, where more could be built in the coming months.¹
• One tower at Khotilovo dates to March 2026, and construction of two towers near Lisiy Island began in early September, RFE/RL says.¹

The big picture: RFE/RL says the total of more than 50 is about half the number built in Moscow and Moscow Oblast since the full-scale invasion began, although more than 20 million people live in the Moscow area against fewer than 100,000 within 50 kilometres of Valdai.¹ Militarnyi adds that Russia began adding air defences near the residence in early 2023, including a reported Pantsir-S1 at Yashcherovo.⁵ The Kremlin accused Ukraine on 29 December 2025 of attacking the residence with more than 90 drones; Ukraine denied it, and The Kyiv Independent reports the CIA told President Trump in early January that Ukraine had not targeted the residence.² LIGA.net, citing the Financial Times, says the Valdai Discussion Club's annual meeting was moved from Sochi to the Moscow region in September at the initiative of Putin's security service, over fears of Ukrainian air strikes.⁴

The other side: nothing in the coverage independently confirms what the towers hold. The Pantsir or Tor assumption is RFE/RL's, and jembob flags the towers as unconfirmed.¹² Counts differ slightly between "more than 50" and "49 or 50".¹² None of the coverage reviewed includes a Russian response.

Single-source note: the imagery analysis traces to RFE/RL's Russian service and jembob. The Kyiv Independent, Ukrainska Pravda, LIGA.net and Militarnyi restate it, and the imagery was not independently reviewed here. The story first appeared on 25 October.