European tourists blocked, who risk finding themselves without visas, foreign students or Russians who want to leave their country for business or holidays: In the midst of the Ukrainian crisis, many passengers at Moscow airport face a scramble, trying to find a solution.
Russia announced earlier that it was banning flights by airlines from 36 countries in retaliation for the closure of many countries' airspace to Russian planes in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Among these countries are all EU members, Britain and Canada. Many countries, including France and the US, had warned their citizens to leave Russia without delay to avoid being stranded there.
At Domodedovo, one of the three major airports serving the Russian capital, the board shows in red many cancelled flights to various destinations. Most passengers are going to other Russian cities, such as Sochi or Novosibirsk, others to countries that have good relations with Moscow, such as Armenia and Azerbaijan, and are therefore not affected by the bans.
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But Davi Ramos, a 35-year-old Brazilian, is not among the lucky ones: "Yesterday we were going to take the plane to Paris and from there we were going to return to Brazil. But halfway through the flight we had to turn back," he explained, waiting patiently in a huge queue that stretched in front of the Emirates counter. "I had to make another booking and now we're going to Brazil via Dubai," he said."
Andrei, a 33-year-old coach, also plans to go through Dubai to get to Spain. The flight ban in Europe "created a problem for him," he said. "I was supposed to leave in the morning but I didn't make it. The flight was direct. So now the journey will take more than 20 hours, there are difficulties."
For Jorge Enrique Rojas Moreno, a Spanish lawyer on holiday in Russia with a dozen or so of his compatriots, the situation has turned into a shambles: their direct flight has been cancelled and their visa expires tonight. "If we don't manage to get out of Russia we will have a huge problem," he said, explaining that he had tried in vain to find tickets to other destinations, and that even contacting the Spanish embassy in Moscow had failed. "I think the European authorities took a hasty decision to close the airspace without first (...) evacuating European citizens. Because I am a European citizen," he said angrily. Next to him, his compatriots seem to have reached their limits and a woman is sobbing.
Another passenger, who only states that he is "Russian, 55 years old", said that he "fully agrees with the cancellation of the flights of European airlines" and even calls for "a complete blockade". "I hope that European leaders will have ... how to put it politely ... nerves of steel and will be able to turn these sanctions into real sanctions so that this absolutely criminal (Russian) power will cease to exist," he concluded.
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