Canada, Europe close airspace to all Russian carriers

Canada and Europe have closed airspace to all Russian carriers!

The directive comes following the Russian offensive towards Ukraine.

Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Canada has announced the closure of its airspace to all Russian carriers in protest of the war.

A growing list of European countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden have closed their airspace to Russian carriers in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Britain barred Aeroflot flights on Thursday.

No flights from Russia appeared Sunday to be arriving at major US airports in Washington, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said: “We will hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked attacks against Ukraine.”

The closure has taken into effect immediately, aligned Canada with the vast majority of European countries.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a press conference on Sunday announced that the European Union will close its airspace to Russian planes, fund weapons supplies to Ukraine, and ban pro-Kremlin media outlets.

“We are shutting down EU airspace for Russian-owned, Russian-registered, or Russian-controlled aircraft,” the bloc’s top official announced. 

“Russian planes, including private jets of oligarchs, will no more be able to land in, take off, or overfly the territory of the EU,” Ursula von der Leyen said.

“For the first time, the EU will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and equipment to a country under attack,” she added, hailing it as a “watershed moment.”

“New measures against Moscow will also see a ban on the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU,” she said, adding, “The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war.”

“We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe,” she added.

Labeling Belarus as “the other aggressor in this war,” bloc’s top official said the EU will target President Alexander Lukashenko’s “regime with a new package of sanctions, hitting their most important sectors.”

“All these measures come on top of the strong package presented yesterday, agreed by our international partners,” she added.

As being reported, on the fifth day of escalation of the war, Russian forces seize two cities in Ukraine. blasts were heard before dawn on Monday in the capital of Kyiv and in the major city of Kharkiv.

Russia’s defence ministry on Monday said that its forces had taken over the towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhya region as well as the area around the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Interfax reported. The plant’s operations continued normally, it said.