In Russia, a trillion rubles have been allocated to the aviation industry under sanctions

Since the beginning of the war with Ukraine, the Russian authorities have allocated more than one trillion rubles (more than 12 billion dollars at the current exchange rate) from the budget to support civil aviation, which has suffered due to Western sanctions. This was reported by Reuters with reference to the data of the Ministry of Finance and the Audit Chamber of Russia.

The amount spent by Moscow since the beginning of the war is almost twice the amount of subsidies allocated to airlines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then the industry suffered losses due to the ban on international flights. During that period, 547 billion rubles were spent.

The main part of funds to support the aviation industry — about 400 billion rubles — came from the National Welfare Fund. Western analysts believe that these investments, in the best case, will only be enough to preserve the aircraft fleet. According to the agency’s interlocutors, Russian airlines operate 991 aircraft, including 405 of Russian production.

Aeroflot, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance did not respond to the agency’s request for comments.

Since the beginning of this year, more than 180 incidents related to malfunctions and breakdowns of aircraft of local airlines have been registered in Russia. This is exactly three times more than for the whole of 2022.

Experts associate the frequent malfunctions with the lack of quality on-board service due to the sanctions imposed on the Russian aviation industry – in particular, the ban on technical inspections and repairs by certified technicians.

Russian companies independently repair their planes, often involving unskilled workers, and in addition, they engage in so-called “aviation cannibalism”, that is, they disassemble one board for spare parts to service others.