Russia Suspends Most Air Travel With Turkey Over Covid Outbreak
- Move cuts off key source of tourism amid a spat over Ukraine
- Some half a million Russians had booked tours in Turkey
People shop on a busy market street in Istanbul on April 9.
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Russia suspended most air travel with Turkey, citing rising coronavirus infections, cutting off a key source of tourism revenue to the country amid tensions over Ankara’s support for Ukraine.
Most charter and regular flights will be suspended between April 15 and June 1, but two flights a week will still run between Moscow and Istanbul, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said in a televised briefing Monday. Fully 80% of the cases of Covid-19 identified in Russians returning from abroad were in people who came from Turkey, public-health chief Anna Popova told the same briefing.