All four Moscow airports reopened after a brief time, including an additional airport in Kaluga which reopened later this afternoon – as of yet no reason has been given
Russia’s aviation watchdog today (December 26) announced the closure of all four airports in Moscow, seemingly without reason.
Aviation authority Rosaviatsia also announced Thursday an airport in Kaluga, located 160km southwest of Russia’s capital, was closed too. “Aircraft crews, air traffic controllers and airport services are taking all necessary measures to ensure flight safety,” the statement from Rosaviatsia said. The five airports were “temporarily not accepting or sending flights”.
The statement on Telegram added: “To ensure the safety of civil aircraft flights, temporary restrictions have been introduced on the operation of Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Zhukovsky and Kaluga airports.”
All four of the airports in Moscow reopened after being briefly closed, with the Kaluga airport reopening later on Thursday afternoon.
It comes after the Azerbaijan Airline plane that crashed in Kazakhstan was claimed by experts and Ukrainian authorities to have been allegedly shot down by Russian air defences.
The flight, from Baku in Azerbaijan, crashed claiming the lives of 38 people – leaving many questions about what caused it. Miraculously, some of the 67 people onboard have survived, however initial reports suggest the disaster was caused by a birdstrike have now been called into question.
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Multiple sources and individuals have made claims to that effect, including former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt said it was “likely that the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was hit by shrapnel”.
Following this, Telegram channel General SVR, which claims to be a Kremlin source, claimed Moscow “does not see anything terrible in what happened” to the plane.
The channel claimed the crash “did not cause any special emotions” to occur from the Russian leadership, and that the Politburo representatives “learned that it was a Russian air defense system that hit the plane flying from Baku to Grozny about an hour and a half after the news of the crash appeared in the information space.”
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