A Russian Ilyushin-Il-96-300 passenger aeroplane flew from Sochi to Belgrade via Bulgaria on Sunday morning, although the country officially closed its airspace for Russian planes in February, the Belgrade N1 Television reported.
Petar Vojinović, the editor of the TangoSix portal, explained for N1 that the EU has, despite the sanctions, left the possibility open for flights to take place for humanitarian and certain diplomatic reasons.
According to the data published on the website flightradar24.com, the plane took off from Sochi around 8 am and landed at the Belgrade airport around 9:30 am.
There is no information about this flight on the website of Nikola Tesla Airport, where the Russian plane landed. However, people posted photos of the plane on the runway of the Belgrade airport on Instagram.
The plane took off from Belgrade airport around 1:30 pm, according to flightradar24.
According to data available online, such flights have been running since the start of the war in Ukraine. Serbia, one of the few European countries still maintaining air traffic with Russia, let Russian diplomats who were declared persona non grata in the countries they served board the planes.
According to Flightradar24, the same plane flew on 17 April from Moscow to Copenhagen, but pilots at the time avoided flying over counties which closed their airspace to Russia.
Serbia has so far failed and refused to align itself with EU sanctions against Russia. President Aleksander Vucic has also stopped short of condemning the invasion of Ukraine. Several pro-Russia demonstrations have also taken place in the capital of Belgrade over the last two months.
