VIENNA, May 28. /TASS/. The method of megaphone diplomacy is absolutely inadmissible, Russian Ambassador to Austria Dmitry Lyubinsky said on Friday, commenting on the cancellation of an Austrian Airlines flight from Vienna to Moscow on Thursday due to the lack of permission to bypass Belarus’ airspace.
"I think it is absolutely inadmissible to use the method of megaphone diplomacy and publicly exert pressure on national air transport authorities on issues related to flight safety. Any problems that may emerge between Russia’s and Austria’s air transport authorities are to be resolved only via professional and constructive dialogue that reckons with mutual interests," he wrote on his Facebook account.
According to the Russian diplomat, relations between Russia and Austria are based on these very principles and the fact that Russia’s Air Transport Agency finally issued a permit to Austrian Airlines to conduct flights to Moscow on May 28 is an example.
On Thursday, the Russian ambassador stressed the inadmissibility of politicizing the issue of flights between Russia and Austria. He stressed that the normalization of air traffic could be addressed in a dialogue between the two countries’ aviation authorities.
Austrian Airlines told TASS earlier that it had had to cancel a passenger flight from Vienna to Moscow on Thursday because Russia had refused to allow it to use an alternative route bypassing Belarus. The air company also had to cancel a cargo flight from Vienna to China’s Nanjing on the same day.
Austrian Airlines, along with other European air carriers, has suspended flights over Belarus in compliance with the EU recommendations following the May 23 incident with the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk.
On Friday, Russia issued a permit to Austrian Airlines to make a passenger flight bypassing Belarus. No such permission has yet been issued to other scheduled passenger flights from Vienna to Moscow and cargo flights from Vienna to Nanjing.