After S7 Airlines and Smartavia, the state-owned Aeroflot will also discontinue all international flights. The only exception to this are connections to Belarus. The reason behind this is probably primarily that there is concern that aircraft leased from the West could be chained up.

Aeroflot will cease international flight operations - excluding Belarus - effective March 8, 2022. At the moment one is confronted with the fact that more and more lessors are demanding their machines back due to the sanctions. There is an acute danger that these could be confiscated in countries that are still allowed to fly to. Accordingly, it is not surprising that the Russian Civil Aviation Authority has issued the recommendation that only Russian or Soviet-made aircraft should be used abroad.

However, some airlines cannot do this at all, because many only have Western equipment in their fleet. The supply of spare parts is also likely to be problematic, because all well-known manufacturers have now announced that they will no longer deliver to the Russian Federation. The Russian government is trying to take countermeasures to prevent the planes from moving in. However, this should only have an effect within Russia, because nationalization, i.e. expropriation of the lessors, will hardly be recognized outside of the largest state in the world. This also does not solve the maintenance and spare parts problem.