Russia opens crisis center to monitor return of Russian tourists from Turkey

  • Rosaviatsiya sets up crisis center for Turkey return flights
  • Russia restricted Turkey flights ‘due to a rise in COVID-19 cases in Turkey’
  • Russian tourists advised to postpone their trips to Turkey

Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) issued a statement today announcing that it has established a crisis center to monitor and assist the return of Russian citizens from Turkey.

“The crisis center of Rosaviatsiya will be regularly informing the Russian Transport Ministry about the number of performed flights from Turkey to Russia, the number of transported citizens as well as the number of Russian citizens with issued flight tickets, who are waiting to return to their homeland,” the statement said.

Russia restricted flights to and from Turkey from April 15 to June 1, officially ‘due to a rise in COVID-19 cases in Turkey’.

But the decision to drastically cut the number of flights to Turkey, which is heavily reliant on revenue from tourism, was announced two days after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Istanbul.

The Russian Tourism Agency recommends Russian tourists to postpone their trips to Turkey or to change the vacationing destination.