"Dumafly" fikk fly over Norge - Sverige og Finland har stengt sine luftrom - Barents Observer / Nettavisen /Dagbladet

 

Sendt meg av min observatør på Byhaugen i Stavanger. 

Norge virker å være servile pussyfoots. Men, sannheten kan være at Sverige og Finland var tidligere ute enn andre siden de var direkte truet av Putin når det gjaldt en evt. NATO innmeldelse. Som jeg har nevnt her på bloggen en rekke ganger nå, så vil luftrommet over Russland høyest sannsynlig bli stengt for alle vestlige fly, og v.v. når det gjelder russiske fly. Det er med andre ord tilbake til Kald Krig versjon 1. Se siste nytt om luftrom i artikkelen fra Nettavisen under. (Red.)

Denied to fly the shortest route over Sweden and Finland, the big IL-96 aircraft from Rossiya Special Flight Squadron headed north and entered Norwegian air space outside Tromsø before crossing over Finnmark region with exit at Svanvik in the Pasvik valley, before heading south towards Moscow. Screenshot from FlightRadar24

Sweden, Finland closed the skies for sanctioned Duma Chairman who then chose north Norway route

Rossiya’s Special Flight Squadron en route from Havana to Moscow had to make a detour via northern Norway. Onboard was Vyacheslav Volodin, the controversial Chairman of the Russian parliament.

By

Thomas Nilsen

February 26, 2022

Volodin and other parliamentarians were on their way home from a visit to Cuba and Nicaragua when the pilots allegedly were told that the state-owned aircraft would not be allowed to enter Swedish and Finnish airspace.

The deviation of the plane from its original planned route is widely reported in Russian media on Saturday, as several reporters from the parliament press pool were traveling together with the delegation. Among them was Edward Chesnokov with Komsomolskaya Pravda, a reporter who detailed the flight pattern as the route was changed.

Flights between the largest city in Russia and tourist destinations in Central America are frequent and routes normally cross over Scandinavia a few hundreds of kilometers south of the Arctic Circle before the trans-Atlantic leg. 

Komsomolskaya Pravda’s reporter describes how the delegation on February 24 suddenly understood that they had to cut short the official visit to Central America. This was when Putin’s forces attacked Ukraine. Therefore, the program in Nicaragua lasted only for five hours before take-off towards Cuba where the large Il-96 plane refueled and made ready for the long-distance home. 

 

Rossiya Special Flight Squadron has three Ilyuchin Il-96 aircraft used by Russian state officials. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 

Somewhere north of the United States, information came that Swedish airspace was closed for the Rossiya’s Special Flight Squadron, according to the media reports. FlightRadar24, an online service tracking planes, shows how the delegation instead had to fly much further north. The plane entered Norwegian airspace outside Tromsø, from where the flight continued over Finnmark to Varangerbotn, then south to Svanvik in the Pasvik valley, from where the aircraft exited Norway and entered Russian airspace south over the Kola Peninsula.

By flying all north to Varangerbotn before turning south, the aircraft avoided Finnish airspace.

The detour added 2,5 hours to the flight. Volodin confirms in his own Telegram channel that the aircraft was denied to fly over Sweden and Finland and instead flew over Norwegian airspace. The plane landed in Moscow Friday evening. He also tells about the somewhat special flight to newspaper Gazeta. 

While Vyacheslav Volodin has been on both the US and EU’s sanction lists since 2014 for his role in the annexation of Crimea. This week, the European Union agreed to put sanctions on all 351 members of the State Duma. Noway has made clear it will follow the same sanctions on Russia as the EU.

It is unclear why Norway allowed the Russian special aircraft to fly over the northernmost part of the country. Questions to authorities by the Barents Observer are for now unanswered. 

Russia on Saturday closed its airspace to commercial flights from Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic. Similarly, several European countries have banned Russian carriers like Aeroflot. 

Norge sperrer ikke luftrommet for russiske fly

NTB 

for 54 minutter siden

Søndag formiddag ble det kjent at Danmark vil sperre luftrommet for russiske fly. Det vil også Finland, Tyskland, Storbritannia og en rekke østeuropeiske land. Men Norge følger foreløpig ikke etter.

– Norge vil slutte seg til EUs omfattende sanksjonspakke mot Russland. Sperring av luftrom for russiske fly er inntil videre ikke en del av EU-sanksjonene, selv om noen europeiske land på egen hånd har gått til dette skrittet, skriver pressevakt Wera Helstrøm i Utenriksdepartementet i en melding til NTB.

– Vi følger situasjonen og vurderer dette fortløpende i tett dialog med våre europeiske partnere, fortsetter hun.

- Steng luftrommet. Nå!

1 time siden - 11:15

Steinar Suvatne

Dagbladet fortalte tidligere i dag at Norge ikke stenger sitt luftrom for russiske fly.

Dette til tross for at både Sverige og Danmark nå stenger sitt luftrom.

Venstre-leder Guri Melby ber statsminister Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap) revurdere umiddelbart.

- Det er vanskelig å forstår hvorfor den norske regjeringen for ethvert tiltak i denne situasjonen dilter etter i stedet for å velge å gå foran. Vi kan ta egne valg samtidig som vi er en dem av en felleseuropeisk linje, sier Melby til Dagbladet.

- Det å stenge luftrommet for russisk flytrafikk er et sånt eksempel. Det har flere andre europeiske land gjort, blant annet våre naboer Sverige og Finland. Det er ingen grunn til å vente på EU skal ta en sånn beslutning for oss, sier Melby.

Akkurat nå er det bare to NATO-land med grense til Russland som holder luftrommet åpent. Det er Ungarn og Norge.

- Det er ingen grunn til at vi lenger skal holde åpent.