Out of harm's way: Russia has closed flights with Turkey
Russia suspended flights with Turkey from April 15 to June 1.
Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova announced this today, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
An exception will be made for flights organized for the return of Russians and for participants in the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant. There are also two flights per week Moscow - Istanbul and Istanbul - Moscow.
The decision was made due to the sharp deterioration of the coronavirus situation in this country. There are now more than 50 thousand new cases of COVID-19 recorded there every day. Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov emphasized that the ban on air travel to Turkey is not related to the meeting between Presidents Recep Erdogan and Vladimir Zelensky.
According to the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, more than 533 thousand Russians booked tours to Turkey with stops between April 15 and May 31. The total cost of booked tours is estimated at 32 billion rubles. As the Deputy Prime Minister noted, tourists can, in agreement with the operator, change the direction of their vacation without changing the dates of their trip, or postpone their trip to a later and more convenient date.
“They will fly to our Black Sea resorts, especially to Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory. On average, they are visited by 7-8 million tourists a year, so the extra “Turkish” ones will raise the statistics by only 10%, but on the other hand, they are richer,” liberal political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov comments on the situation.
Another political scientist, Marat Bashirov, believes that the cessation of flights is, after all, connected with the situation in Ukraine.
“Half a million Russian citizens live in Donbass, half a million Russian tourists will not fly to Turkey yet. There is so much symbolism in this. And on the other hand. What kind of holiday is there in Antalya if the war in Donbass is fought using Turkish drones? All tourists will be hostages then,” Bashirov wrote in his Telegram channel.
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