The flight made sense: Cyprus is ready to restore flights with Russia
The Cypriot authorities expect to restart direct flights and economic ties with Russia after the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, Haris Georgiadis, head of the country's parliamentary committee on Foreign Affairs, told Izvestia. Earlier, a new network of visa centers for travel to the island was opened in the Russian Federation. However, the lifting of sanctions against Russia will require a unanimous decision of the EU Council. According to analysts, the association has split into two camps on this issue. The Baltic States, Poland, and the Nordic countries are aiming at a complete break with the Russian Federation. Southern Europe has taken a wait-and-see attitude and is ready to restore relations in the future.
Cyprus is ready to restore relations with Russia
Against the background of the development of the negotiation process on Ukraine in the EU countries, they began to talk about their readiness to restore relations with Russia. Recently, for example, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, said this.
Cyprus is counting on the resumption of direct flights and economic ties after the end of the conflict in Ukraine, Haris Georgiadis, head of the country's parliamentary committee on Foreign and European Affairs, told Izvestia.
"We look forward to restoring air traffic and our broader economic ties with Russia after the end of the invasion of Ukraine," the Cypriot politician told Izvestia.
It should be noted that the Russian authorities have repeatedly rejected accusations of aggressive actions. Moscow emphasizes that a special military operation is being conducted in Ukraine, the purpose of which is the demilitarization and denazification of this country.
Relations between Russia and Cyprus have traditionally been strong. Apart from the fact that both countries are closely linked by Orthodoxy, Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is involved in the settlement of the Cyprus conflict. Moscow and Nicosia have also developed a mutually beneficial economic partnership. In 2019, Russians provided 20% of financial revenues from tourism to the republic's treasury and were in second place in terms of the number of trips there. Finally, Cyprus has been a key financial hub for Russian businesses for decades.
Nevertheless, as an EU member, Cyprus has joined all packages of sanctions against Russia. In 2022, Nicosia closed its airspace to Russian aircraft, trade and tourist flow were seriously reduced, and large companies began to leave the Cypriot jurisdiction en masse. In 2023, the Russian Ambassador to the republic, Murat Zyazikov, noted that Cyprus had lost more than €1 billion from the closure of flights to our country.
At the same time, not everyone in Cyprus agrees with the anti-Russian restrictions. Back in 2016, the country's parliament voted for a resolution to lift sanctions. It was not binding, but it showed the sympathies of the island's politicians. And in 2022, according to the survey, over 58% of Cypriots opposed restrictions on the Russian Federation.
Cyprus' interest in Russian tourists and investments is evidenced by the fact that a new network of visa centers opened in Russia on December 15. They appeared in eight cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Kazan and Novosibirsk. By the way, Russians now occupy the first place in terms of the number of residence permits among citizens of non-EU countries living in Cyprus.
The number of trips by Russians to Europe in 2025 increased by 20-30% compared to last year due to the return of pent-up demand due to the stronger ruble and increased transit traffic. Cyprus is among the countries that are popular, Dmitry Gorin, vice president of the Russian Union of Travel Industry (PCT), told Izvestia.
The split of the EU into two camps
According to Haris Georgiadis, the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine will pave the way for the restoration of not only bilateral ties between Cyprus and Russia, but also relations between the EU and the Russian Federation.
The Russian leadership has also repeatedly stated its readiness to resume relations with Europe. For example, Vladimir Putin noted during his trip to Kyrgyzstan that if the EU countries decide to cooperate with Russia again, Moscow will not mind.
But for now, the European Commission continues to work on the 20th sanctions package against Russia. In Brussels, they are directly talking about preparing for a military confrontation with the Russian Federation, and defense projects are being created for this, for example, the drone wall. Therefore, at the pan-European level, the restoration of relations with Moscow is unlikely to be possible in the foreseeable future.
However, we can talk about a certain tacit division of EU members into conditionally Northern and Western European states that promote an aggressive agenda towards Russia, and Southern European countries that disagree with such an aggressive position, Ilya Shcherbakov, an employee of the Department of International Relations and Integration Processes at the Faculty of Political Science at Moscow State University, told Izvestia.
"The ideas of restoring relations come primarily from the business circles of these countries, for whom severing ties with Russia is associated with economic losses and low profit rates of their companies," the expert noted.
Such states, for example, include Greece. The leader of the opposition Greek Solution party, Kyriakos Velopoulos, told Izvestia that since 2022, the republic's national debt has increased by €13 billion, and the country is paying seven times too much for gas supplies.
— Sanctions against Russia have become a disaster for the Greek economy. We are talking about losses of billions of euros in many sectors. Our tourism industry has lost a vital market for Russian tourists. Agricultural exports have collapsed in a market that has traditionally been very important for Greek goods," Velopoulos said.
In any case, the lifting of sanctions and the restoration of flights between the EU and Russia will require a unanimous decision by all 27 member states. That is, supporters of a complete break in ties, for example, the Baltic states and Poland, may block such an initiative.
Next, member states, national regulators and individual airlines should start reviewing and concluding new service agreements with Russian airports, Daria Moiseeva, PhD in Political Science, chief analyst at ANO Kolaboratoria, told Izvestia.
— Theoretically, even if EASA (the European Aviation Safety Agency) allows flights to Russia, some airlines may boycott this destination. However, Russia has always been a very profitable destination for them due to low competition with Russian airlines," the expert says.
The situation is similar in the visa policy. The EU can centrally cancel the increased fees and restore simplified visa issuance, but then each country independently decides whether or not to grant visas to individual applicants, Moiseeva clarifies. Already, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic and Estonia do not issue travel documents to Russians. Slovakia was also on this list, but in the summer its authorities resumed issuing visas to Russian citizens of this category.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
