Moscow Banning Egypt Flights Not Political

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The decisions to suspend flights with Egypt were not linked to Moscow not trusting the Egyptian authorities, and are not political, and are only connected with the necessity to ensure Russians' security, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

"As far as tourism is concerned, those decisions which were made to limit the flights of our civilian aviation to Egypt, they're not linked to distrust in the Egyptian authorities, those are not political decisions. They are related to the need to ensure security of our citizens," Putin said during his annual press conference.

Moscow imposed a ban on Russian flights to and from Egypt a week after the Russian-operated Kogalymavia airline's Airbus A321 crashed on October 31 en route from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board, which has become the largest civil aviation disaster in Russian history.

In early December, Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said the country would not resume its air links with Egypt before the end of 2015.

Last week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said that Russian experts were planning to travel to Egypt to work on strengthening aviation security, after which Moscow might remove its flights ban.