Russian authorities have asked Washington to lift sanctions against its flagship airline Aeroflot to resume direct flights with the United States but have not yet received an answer, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.
“We made this offer at the meeting in [Saudi Arabia] more than a month ago,” Lavrov told reporters in Kazakhstan. “The Americans considered it, but so far we haven’t seen any response.”
Aeroflot’s shares on the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) climbed by as much as 4% following Lavrov’s comments.
Aeroflot was cut off from many of its most profitable routes after Western countries closed their airspace to Russian airplanes in retaliation to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Western sanctions have also seen aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus halt their supplies of replacement parts, affecting 95% of Aeroflot’s fleet.
Last month, the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia called for the removal of sanctions on Russia’s aviation sector as a “humanitarian necessity” amid reports that the White House had ordered a list of entities and individuals eligible for potential sanctions relief.
The Kremlin has called sanctions relief as a prerequisite for normalizing U.S.-Russia relations.
