The Russian government will allocate a total of 311 billion rubles to support airlines and airports in 2022. Ilya Torosov, First Deputy Minister of Economic Development, told Izvestia on Monday, April 11, in an interview.

“As the first step in measures to support the aviation industry, a decision has been made to allocate 25 billion rubles. Of these, 19.5 billion rubles will go to air carriers to compensate for lost revenues – due to the return of tickets in connection with the cancellation of international and domestic transportation. And another Br1.5 billion – to the closed airports in the south of Russia to compensate the costs for March and April,” said the deputy minister.

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier ordered to allocate another 110 billion rubles to subsidize domestic transportation from April to October 2022, recalled Torosov. This amount included 4 billion rubles of the 25 billion specified earlier.

“In addition, the scheme proposed by the government and agreed by the Bank of Russia on payments under letters of credit has been supported. According to preliminary calculations, about 180 billion rubles will be required to support airlines in terms of such payments,” the deputy minister added.

Earlier, the head of the Ministry of Transport Vitaly Savelyev said that Russian banks issued letters of credit against foreign banks, thus guaranteeing payments of Russian air carriers under leasing contracts with Western counterparties.

After EU sanctions were announced and lessors made demands to terminate contracts and return airplanes, these letters of credit were opened, the minister explained.