Russia Says It Was 'Caught off Guard' After Country 'Loses' 76 Planes

Russia has lost 76 passenger jets as a result of sanctions imposed by the West in response to President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, the country's transport minister Vitaly Savelyev said on Saturday.

"We were unexpectedly caught off guard," Savelyev said at the opening of an exhibition called "Russia on the Move", state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported. "In total, we lost 76 passenger jets." Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment on Saturday.

Russia's aviation industry has been hard hit by Western sanctions imposed over Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian-operated planes have been sanctioned by the U.S. government, and aircraft manufacturers have stopped delivering spare parts and new planes to the country.

The United States and the EU demanded the return of leased aircraft, although the Kremlin has sought to work around this by encouraging carriers to re-register the aircraft in Russia. This has meant that the planes have continued to fly without receiving crucial software upgrades and mandated maintenance checks that are needed to guarantee their airworthiness, Bloomberg reported in March.

Russia is attempting to try to work around the sanctions and look for ways to substitute Western-made spare parts and equipment for its aircraft to keep the industry afloat.

In a program to develop the country's aviation sector by 2030, Russia's Transport Ministry said it anticipates the country will gradually reduce the number of foreign aircraft in operation. The ministry added that airlines will find ways to substitute Western-made spare parts, according to state-run news agency Interfax.

Anastasia Dagaeva, an independent expert on Russian aviation, wrote in a report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in March that Moscow, "in the space of just a few days... lost international destinations, leasing contracts and technical support for their foreign planes, partnerships with other carriers, foreign software, insurance, and other services."

"The primary goal for Russian civil aviation right now is to stay afloat until 2030," Dagaeva said, adding that it won't disappear any time soon, but will become more self-contained.

There have been multiple cases in recent months of Russian domestic passenger planes making emergency landings due to technical issues driven by a lack of spare parts.

In September, a Ural Airlines Airbus 320 that was flying from the Black Sea resort of Sochi to the city of Omsk in southwestern Siberia attempted to make an emergency landing at the airport in the city of Novosibirsk, but had to land in open countryside.

Russia's aviation agency Rosaviatsia said the landing took place "on a site selected from the air" near the village of Kamenka, next to a forest in the Novosibirsk region. It added that none of the 159 people on board was injured and that the passengers were "being housed in the nearest village," Newsweek previously reported. Ural Airlines described the landing area an "improvised airport."

More than two months later, the plane has yet to be retrieved, and Russian authorities have since built a fence around the aircraft, images circulating on social media show. Ural Airlines CEO Sergey Skuratov previously said that the plane's removal would take at least one month.

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