Russia is talking to Kazakhstan and other “friendly countries” about the possibility of foreign airlines flying domestic routes inside Russia, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
The report comes as Russia’s civil aviation industry struggles under the impact of Western sanctions that were implemented after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoit did not mention the sanctions in comments that were reported by Tass this week, but he referred generally to a global shortage of aircraft.
“We are negotiating with friendly countries,” Starovoit said to journalists at a forum in Yekaterinburg, Russia. “For example, we are negotiating with Kazakhstan.”
The minister, who took office this year, said Kazakhstan had experienced a 35% increase in “aviation mobility” this year.
“The fact is that there is currently a shortage of aircraft all over the world,” Sarovoit said, according to Tass. “And we see that against the backdrop of growth in transportation in foreign countries, the shortage of aircraft leads to a deficit of them, and it is difficult for other countries to solve these problems.”
He was referring to a process called cabotage, under which an aircraft registered in one country is used for transportation from one point to another within another country. It is unusual in the case of commercial aircraft because countries want to boost their domestic airlines and markets, though the rules can be more relaxed for some private or business aircraft.
Russian airlines have traditionally relied on Western aircraft and were vulnerable to sanctions aimed at depriving them of spare parts and supplies. Western companies had demanded that Russia return hundreds of leased aircraft because of the war, but Russia refused. The industry is heavily reliant on state support to keep it going.
“Russian aviation, disconnected from suppliers and from experience and knowledge transfer networks, will likely survive, but increasingly as a stand-alone operation,” Anastasia Dagaeva wrote in a March blog post for the Kennan Institute, a research center on Eurasia affiliated with the Washington-based Wilson Center.
In contrast, civil aviation in Kazakhstan has been experiencing considerable growth and the Central Asian country is a more popular destination for transit flights because of restrictions affecting Russian airspace. Though the Kazakh industry faces its own challenges, including a shortage of staff.
