On Sunday Canada joined the growing number of countries who announced they were closing their airspace to all Russian aircraft operators, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Canada is prohibiting the operation of Russian-owned, chartered or operated aircraft in Canadian airspace, including the airspace above Canada’s territorial waters. The closure is effective immediately and will remain until further notice.
Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra, said, “All of Canada is united in its outrage of President Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. In response, we have closed Canadian airspace to Russian-owned or operated aircraft. The Government of Canada condemns Russia’s aggressive actions, and we will continue to take action to stand with Ukraine.”
Britain
The UK has also banned Russian carrier Aeroflot as part of a series of sanctions imposed which includes the freezing of assets. All Russian scheduled carriers are banned as are all private jets from Russia .
More than 200 flights have been cancelled to and from Ukraine in the last week before its airspace was closed. It includes 44 flights from the UK.
In retaliation Moscow banned all UK based carriers from Russian airspace, a move that could increase flight times from Britain to Asia by about 90 minutes..
Sean Doyle, BA CEO said it “would not have a dramatic impact’ on airfares.”.
BA’s website and app were offline on Friday, preventing customers checking in and making new bookings and causing flight cancellations.
The airline said there were “significant technical issues” but denied it was the result of a cyberattack.
Europe
The European Union plans to close its airspace to Russian airlines, fund weapons purchase to Ukraine and ban some pro-Kremlin media outlets in its latest response to Russia’s invasion, European Commission officials said Sunday.
The measures, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she expected to be endorsed, would mark the first time the 27-nation bloc finances the purchase and delivery of weapons and equipment to a country under attack.
“Another taboo has fallen. The taboo that the European Union was not providing arms in a war,” said the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
The Commission’s plans followed the announcement earlier in the day that Germany was committing €100 billion (US $113 billion) to a special armed forces fund and would keep its defense spending above 2% of GDP from now on. The shift underscored how Russia’s war on Ukraine was rewriting Europe’s post-World War II security and defense policy in ways that were unthinkable only a few weeks ago.
Anti-war protesters, meanwhile, took to the streets in Berlin, Rome, Prague, Istanbul and other cities — even Russian cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg and in a dozen Belarusian cities — to demand an end to the war, the largest ground offensive on the continent since WWII.