Partly because of the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States of America, Western lessors have had to reclaim aircraft leased to Russian airlines. That doesn't suit the Kremlin at all. A law signed by Vladimir Putin is intended to at least make this more difficult.

Not all airlines behave "stubbornly", because some have the leased aircraft more or less voluntarily flown to Turkey and returned to the owners there. Many Russian airlines no longer fly outside of Russia and Belarus with machines leased from western lessors because the planes are threatened with seizure.

Added to this is the fact that the Bermuda Islands, where about 740 aircraft operated in the Russian Federation were registered, all carriers from this state thrown off the register. Aircraft are now being entered into the Russian register at express speed. To speed this up, Putin has now passed a new law.

This enables the Russian Civil Aviation Authority to issue new certificates and then place them under Russian supervision. The affected machines should then be able to be used at least domestically and to Belarus. In fact, the procedure is tantamount to an expropriation of the lessor.

The behavior of the Russian government could have serious repercussions at a later date, because it could become difficult for carriers from Russia to get hold of western aircraft in the future. It also cannot be ruled out that claims for damages will be asserted and that these could also be enforced by seizure of other aircraft belonging to Russian airlines. So it would be theoretically possible that a Lessor could then, for example, have an SSJ-100 chained up outside of Russia and the auction could be threatened.