Aeroflot halting all foreign flights, minus Belarus, from March 8 | Russia-Ukraine war News

Go arrives right after aviation agency cites significant danger of overseas-leased planes getting impounded as component of Western sanctions.

Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship provider, states it is suspending all international flights – except to neighbouring Belarus – setting up on March 8, as Moscow faces a sweeping range of Western sanctions about its invasion of Ukraine.

The move on Saturday arrived just after the country’s civil aviation entire body, Rosaviatsiya, recommended that all Russian airways running overseas-leased planes halt both equally passenger and cargo flights abroad, citing a substantial threat of rental aircraft getting impounded as element of Western sanctions that ban leasing of planes to Russia.

Rosaviatsiya’s recommendation does not utilize to Russian airlines that use Russian planes or foreign planes that are not at risk of remaining impounded. It also does not use to overseas airways from nations around the world that have not imposed sanctions on Russia and have not shut down their airspace for Russian planes.

Much more than 50 % of the business aircraft in Russia are leased, according to Aviation 7 days, an market publication.

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An Aeroflot assertion on the “temporary suspension of all international flights from March 8” cited new “circumstances that impede the procedure of flights”. It observed all domestic routes would keep on unchanged, as perfectly as flights to Belarus, whose chief Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s largest point out-owned airline also reported it would cancel return tickets for passengers who are scheduled to depart Russia soon after March 6 and vacation back immediately after March 8. These with 1-way tickets will be authorized to fly up till March 8.

Rosaviatsia also suggested Russians in search of to return household from international international locations organize flights transiting via nations that had not joined sanctions, these as Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Serbia.

Before this 7 days, one more Russian carrier, S7, introduced the suspension of all its global flights because of to sanctions imposed on Russia above the country’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

The funds airline Pobeda – a subsidiary of Aeroflot – also said it will be halting worldwide flights from March 8.

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The airline sector was a single of the first to be influenced by the economic fallout from the war.

Russian provider Aeroflot was banned from the airspace of the overall EU, the United Kingdom and Canada, forcing it to suspend flights to these destinations.

In retaliation, Russia has banned airlines from those people similar nations around the world from traveling more than its territory.

Putin, who on Saturday visited an Aeroflot coaching centre outside the funds, Moscow, claims his aims in Ukraine are to protect Russian-talking communities as a result of the “demilitarisation and de-Nazification” of the country so that it turns into neutral.

Ukraine and Western international locations have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for the invasion and have imposed severe sanctions aimed at isolating Moscow.

“These sanctions that are currently being imposed are akin to a declaration of war but thank God it has not appear to that,” Putin informed Aeroflot personnel.

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