You're reading: Ukraine, Russia reduce air links as ties further erode

Kateryna Medvedeva lives in Kyiv and flies to Moscow every month to visit her mom for the weekend.

But the trip will become a challenge for her after Oct. 25, when tit-for-tat airline sanctions between Russia and Ukraine take full effect.

Russia announced on Sept. 28 that all Ukrainian airlines would be banned from flying to Russia. The decision came in response to an earlier announcement from the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure that some Russian airlines would not be allowed to fly to Ukrainian cities also starting Oct. 25.

The escalating sanctions row sparked by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in Crimea and the Donbas is now impacting ordinary citizens in the two countries. Medvedeva told the Kyiv Post she was afraid the sanctions would make her regular family visits impractical.

“Flying is a much faster way than going by train. I try not to take days off work, and the train journey takes two days itself. And it’s not that much cheaper to go by train,” she said. “The alternative to the train is to go by bus. It’s much cheaper, but one of my friends has taken it, and she told me it was hell. Well, what can we do? Our people have gotten used to the fact that everything is getting less and less convenient.”

Ukraine’s sanctions target 25 Russian airlines, which were included in a list of nearly 400 sanctioned individuals and companies compiled by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine and announced by the presidential administration on Sept. 16.

According to Oleksandr Myronenko, the editor of airline industry website avianews.com, the sanctions will in fact affect only four Russian companies: Aeroflot, Transaero, Sibir of the S7 Airline group, and Rossiya from the Aeroflot group.

He said that all of the airlines included in the sanctions list fly to Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March 2014, but only the above four also fly to cities that are under the control of the Ukrainian government.

“While Russia said that it would ban all Ukrainian airlines to its cities, Ukraine left a loophole for these Russian airlines,” Myronenko told the Kyiv Post. “It would be enough (for an airline) not to fly to Crimea – then it can fly to Ukraine. For example, Russia’s UTair airline doesn’t fly to Crimea, and Ukraine’s sanctions didn’t target it. So it appears it can keep flying to Ukraine, as long as Ukraine doesn’t decide to mirror the Russian response and ban all Russian airlines.”

The press service of Ukraine International Airlines confirmed on Sept. 29 that the company has already received official notification from Russia’s aviation authorities that it will be banned from flying to Russia starting Oct. 25.

Evgeniya Satskaya, the company’s press secretary, was cited by the Interfax news agency as saying that the losses to the company from Russia’s sanctions could be estimated at about $10 million per year, and that this would “inevitably” raise the price of tickets on other routes.

Ukraine International Airlines had not responded to requests for comment as the Kyiv Post went to press on Oct.2.

According to Myronenko, the situation is not “as critical for the company as it might seem”, as it still has flights to dozens of the cities every day, and there were only five flights a day to Russia.

“I would call it a blow to the aviation industry of Ukraine. The Ukrainian airports to which Russian airlines fly will lose foreign currency income,” he said. “Ukrainian passengers will lose a cheap alternative to fly to the Far East or the Americas, as Russian companies offer good prices for flights with transfers in Moscow. Ukrainian airlines will lose money. The loss could exceed hundreds of millions of dollars for all parties.”

Oleh Marchenko, partner at law firm Marchenko Danevych who does consulting work for airlines, told the Kyiv Post that “some airline industry specialists estimate that the losses to the Russian market could be approximately 500 million rubles (about $7.6 million) a month.”

While experts try to estimate the damage to the airlines from the sanctions row, passengers have been left looking for workarounds.

Olga Kudinenko, who lives in Moscow and heads the Kyiv-based Ukrainian charity foundation Tabletocki, said she flies to Kyiv once every two to three weeks. She was outraged by the news of the imposition of sanctions on airlines.

“I think it’s complete nonsense, which will affect business and families more than politics,” Kudinenko said, adding that she had no idea what she would do. “Maybe there will be some foreign charter flights.”

Meanwhile, as attitudes in both Ukraine and Russia harden and the war in the Donbas settles into an uneasy stalemate, it looks like the sanctions are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Some argue that the Ukrainian government’s measure is late in arriving.

According to political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, although the airline sanctions will cause problems for Ukraine, sanctions are a matter of principle, and the decision to clip the Russian airlines’ wings should have been made long ago.

“These companies have been flying to Crimea – that was the main criteria (for banning them),” he told the Kyiv Post. “So yes, I think it was completely the right decision. However, this decision should have been made last year, not now.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]