MOSCOW, May 30. /TASS/. The national Belarusian airline Belavia does not plan to operate flights to Crimea until the appropriate political decision is made, head of Belavia Igor Cherginets said in an interview with the YouTube channel Soloviev Live.
"We will not fly to Crimea yet," Cherginets said adding that "there should be political recognition of Crimea, in this case, as [part of] the Russian state."
On May 29, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko paid a visit to Sochi for an informal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Following the meeting, the heads of state instructed the transport ministries of the two countries to "organize all aspects of air traffic."
At the same time, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the possibility of Belavia flights to Crimea was not discussed at the meeting in Sochi.
On May 24, after the incident with the plane of the Irish Ryanair, the EU summit decided to ban Belarusian airlines from flying to the airports of the EU countries and to fly over their territory, and also recommended that European carriers refuse to fly in the airspace of Belarus. A number of countries have already closed their airspace for Belavia.
Earlier on Saturday, First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Nikolai Snopkov said that in connection with the decisions of the EU countries, Belavia plans to compensate for the costs by increasing the number of flights to the CIS countries, including Russia.