Belavia explained why there will be no flights to Crimea

MOSCOW, May 30. /TASS/. The national Belarusian airline Belavia does not plan to operate flights to Crimea until a corresponding political decision is made. This was stated on Saturday by the HEAD of "Belavia" Igor Cherginets on the air of the YouTube channel  "Soloviev Live" .

"We won't fly to Crimea yet," Cherginets said. He added that "there should be political recognition of Crimea, in this case, as [part of] the Russian state."

On May 29, President of Belarus ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO visited Sochi to hold an informal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Following the meeting, the heads of state instructed the ministries of transport of the two countries to "organize all aspects of air traffic." At the same time, according to the press secretary of the President of RUSSIA Dmitry Peskov, the issue of the possibility of flights by the Belarusian airline Belavia to Crimea was not raised at the meeting in Sochi.

On May 24, the EU summit, due to an incident with an Irish Ryanair aircraft, decided to ban Belarusian airlines from operating flights to airports in EU countries and flying over their territory, and also recommended that European carriers refuse to fly in the airspace of Belarus. A number of countries have already closed their airspace to Belavia.

Earlier on Saturday, First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Nikolai Snopkov said that against the background of these decisions of the EU countries, Belavia intends to compensate for the costs by increasing the number of flights to the CIS countries, including Russia.