An analysis of commercial air traffic over Russia has shown that Western sanctions have failed spectacularly to reach their primary objective – grounding the country’s fleet of commercial aviation.
Using Flightradar24 data elapsed over two dates – April 6, 2022 and March 29, 2023, a leading German business news outlet discovered that commercial air traffic over Russia seems to be “about the same” today as it was in 2022, with planes streaming steadily in and out of Moscow (a major hub), due north to Karelia, south to the Caucasus, southeast to Central Asia, and clear across the country to Siberia.
Over the Black Sea, the map shows another phenomenon – hundreds of planes flying over the body of water from Europe to Asia and back, forced to take long detours due to restrictions on the use of Russian airspace by countries which have slapped similar restrictions on Russian carriers.
Screengrab from Wirtschaftswoche time elapse video comparing commercial air traffic over Russia in April 2022 and late March 2023.
© Photo : Wirtschaftswoche video
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s assurances last year that cutting Russia off from Western-made planes and spare parts would result in “a huge effect with relatively little effort” turned out to be very “obviously wrong,” according to the magazine. Instead, it said, flights out of Russia toward the Middle East, India, China, and Thailand seem to be “even greater now” than before the escalation of the Ukraine crisis.
Western leaders’ hope that Russian airlines would be grounded thanks to their dependence on American, European, and Canadian aircraft for about three quarters of their fleets also backfired, the magazine stressed, with Moscow quickly approving their expropriation and re-registration as Russian aircraft, and spare parts becoming available through holes in sanctions from suppliers in Turkiye, Kazakhstan, and other countries.
The workarounds mean Russia will be able to hold out on its stock of Western planes for at least a decade, according to the magazine.
However, Russia is banking on doing so for much longer. Not only has Russian flag carrier Aeroflot begun sending aircraft to Iran for repairs (the Islamic Republic knows a thing or two about living under sanctions), but the state and the nation’s airlines have finally ramped up support for domestic manufacturers to produce more civilian aircraft (and the spare parts for them) at home.
Earlier this year, Aeroflot announced that it wants 70 percent of its fleet to consist of domestically-made planes by the year 2030.