Plane crash in Kazakhstan, question about the safety of flights over Russia

“The airspace over Russia must be closed,” Gunduz Mamedov, a Ukrainian lawyer from Azerbaijan who was the deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine in 2019-2022, wrote on the Ukrainska Pravda website on Saturday. He also led Ukrainian investigation teams into attacks on passenger planes in 2014 and 2020.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, long-range drones can now hit targets deep inside Russia, up to two thousand kilometers away. Mamedov said the failure to close Russian airspace to civil aviation “poses a serious threat to passengers, given the possibility of errors or incidents involving air defense systems.”

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Russia has introduced temporary flight restrictions in the cities of Sochi, Kazan, Samara, Grozny and Makhachkala. All four Moscow airports were temporarily closed on Thursday for “security reasons,” without providing details.

Regardless of the war situation, the Kremlin has not closed its airspace, and many airlines from various parts of the world still fly over or to Russia.

Since February 24, 2022, when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, the vast majority of carriers have suspended connections with Russia.

Flights to and in Russian space are still carried out by, among others, Turkish Airlines, Air SERBIA, Belavia, Egyptair, Air Algerie, Qatar Airways, Air Arabia, Emirates and Flydubai. Although the latter canceled two flights to southern Russian cities on Friday. The operators of such connections also include those from Asia, such as Air China, China Eastern, Ubekistan Airways and Air India. However, no airline from the Americas and Oceania operates such flights.

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After Wednesday's downing of an Azerbaijani plane by a Russian air defense missile, several airlines suspended connections with Russia. Flights to this country were canceled by the national carriers of Azerbaijan (AZAL) and Kazakhstan (Qazaq Air), as well as the Israeli airline El Al. Moreover, Fly Dubai, a low-cost carrier from the United Arab Emirates, suspended connections with Russia. From Monday, regular flights between Moscow and Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, will also be suspended for a month.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin apologized on Saturday to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for the “tragic incident” that took place in the Russian air zone. However, he did not say directly that the downing was caused by a Russian missile.

Russian media reported on Sunday that Putin held another telephone conversation with the president of Azerbaijan that day. – During today's telephone conversation, they continued to discuss various issues related to the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency, without revealing details.

Before the second conversation with Putin, Aliyev said on state TV AzTV that “the Russian side must apologize to Azerbaijan, admit its guilt, hold those responsible criminally liable and pay compensation to the Azerbaijani state and the victims of the tragic flight.”

Confirmation that the plane was shot down by Russian air defense would provide another argument for the need to close Russian airspace to civilian flights, Mamedov said. The Kremlin does not want this because it would have negative economic and political consequences for it, the lawyer added.

In its latest annual report, the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) emphasized that although the number of air accidents had decreased significantly after 1970, since 2014 there has been an increase in the number of victims related to “illegal acts”. In the last decade, they accounted for a quarter of the total number of fatalities in aviation, EASA calculates.

In recent years, attacks on passenger planes have been linked to Russia and Ukraine. In October 2001, Ukrainian armed forces mistakenly shot down a Sibir Airlines Tu-154M aircraft en route from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Novosibirsk, Russia, during exercises in Crimea. Although initially the Ukrainian side did not admit guilt, it eventually took responsibility for the death of 78 people on board.

The most famous disaster occurred on July 17, 2014, when pro-Russian separatists in Donbas shot down a Boeing 777 belonging to Malaysia Airlines and flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. There were 298 people on board, including 193 Dutch citizens; everyone died.

After the crash, airlines began avoiding flights over eastern Ukraine; after the Russian invasion of the country in 2022, the state closed its airspace to civilian flights. Three years after the tragedy, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) issued for the first time guidelines for assessing the risk of traveling over conflict zones.

In January 2020 Iran's military mistakenly shot down a Ukraine International Airlines plane that was flying from Tehran to Kiev with 176 people on board.. The accident occurred shortly after Iran attacked US military bases in Iraq in response to the US killing of General Qassem Soleimani, one of the most influential Iranian commanders.

– The international community must establish clear, explicit and unambiguous standards on when states should close the airspace under their jurisdiction, said UN human rights expert Agnes Callamard on the anniversary of the downing of the Ukrainian plane in Iran.

She added that in situations of military tension, even if they are not considered armed conflicts, the best way to prevent attacks on civilian flights is to simply close the airspace.

“If states do not act responsibly to close the airspace under their jurisdiction or restrict flights, then it is the responsibility of other states and airlines to take immediate action to restrict carriers from flying over or near the conflict zone,” said the expert, who currently heads Amnesty International.