Sweden, Finland closed the air for the sanctioned Duma chairman who then chose the northern Norway route
Volodin and other parliamentarians were on their way home from a visit to Cuba and Nicaragua when the pilots were told that the state-owned aircraft would not be allowed to enter Swedish and Finnish airspace.
The plane’s deviation from its original planned route is widely reported in Russian media on Saturday, as several reporters from parliament’s press pool traveled with the delegation. Among them was Edward Chesnokov Komsomolskaya Pravdaa reporter who detailed the flight pattern when the route was changed.
Flights between Russia’s largest city and tourist destinations in Central America are frequent and routes normally cross Scandinavia a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle before the transatlantic stage.
Komsomolskaya Pravda’s reporter describes how the delegation on February 24 suddenly understood that they had to cancel the official visit to Central America. That was when Putin’s forces attacked Ukraine. Therefore, the program in Nicaragua lasted only five hours before the start against Cuba, where the large Il-96 plane refueled and made ready for the long-distance home.
Somewhere north of the United States came information that Swedish airspace was closed to Rossiya’s Special Flight Squadron, according to media reports. FlightRadar24, an online service that tracks aircraft, shows how the delegation was instead allowed to fly much further north. The plane went into Norwegian airspace outside Tromsø, from where the flight continued over Finnmark to Varangerbotn, then south to Svanvik in Pasvikdalen, from where the plane left Norway and went into Russian airspace south over the Kola Peninsula.
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By flying all the way north to Varangerbotn before turning south, the aircraft avoided Finnish airspace.
The detour added 2.5 hours to the flight. Volodin confirms on its own Telegram channel that the aircraft was refused to fly over Sweden and Finland and instead flew over Norwegian airspace. The plane landed in Moscow on Friday night. He also talks about the somewhat special flight to the newspaper Gazeta.
While Vyacheslav Volodin has been on both the US and EU sanctions lists since 2014 for his role in the annexation of Crimea. This week, the EU agreed to impose sanctions on all 351 members of the State Duma. Noway has made it clear that it will follow the same sanctions against Russia as the EU.
It is unclear why Norway let the Russian special aircraft fly over the northernmost part of the country. Questions to authorities from the Barents Observer are currently unanswered.
Russia closed its airspace for commercial flights from Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic on Saturday. Similarly, several European countries have banned Russian airlines such as Aeroflot.