Ukraine tells ICAO that Russian airspace is unsafe as foreign carriers cancel Moscow flights

Ukraine formally told the International Civil Aviation Organization that Russian airspace is not safe for civil aviation and asked the agency to encourage member states to ban civilian flights there. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the notice was a "responsible decision" taken because Russia would not warn carriers itself. Infrastructure Minister Mykola Kalashnyk put the request in a letter to ICAO Council President Juan Carlos Salazar, a copy of which Reuters saw. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had already told airlines and insurers that "Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe" as Ukrainian long-range drones multiply.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine does not intend to target civilian aircraft. He said the growing number of attack drones inside Russia still has to be priced by anyone using the airports. Sybiha wrote that the aim is to prevent unintended incidents. "The war is returning home to Russia," he said, citing Article 51 of the UN Charter. ICAO answered that it is "observing heightened risks of civil aircraft being targeted or caught in crossfire" and that rerouting does not remove the underlying threat.

The market moved before the legal file did. Flight-tracking data cited by Reuters showed 21 cancellations and 235 delays at Moscow Sheremetyevo on Wednesday and 22 cancellations and 94 delays at Vnukovo. The independent outlet Agentstvo counted 27 foreign-airline cancellations to and from the capital, a jump on the previous day. Pegasus and Turkish Airlines, flydubai, Nesma, Shirak Avia, Kuwait Airways, and Somon Air were among the carriers that pulled flights. Pegasus called the reason "technical and operational." Most European and U.S. airlines have avoided Russian airspace since February 2022. The carriers now blinking are the ones that had kept flying: Turkish, Gulf, Egyptian, Armenian, Kuwaiti, Tajik.

The military facts behind the notice are no longer local to the border. Ukraine has been hitting refineries and depots near Moscow and St Petersburg and military sites more than 2,000 kilometres from its frontier. Military sources say the daily drone launch rate is already in the hundreds and that the target is 1,000. Osprey Flight Solutions told clients that deep strikes near both cities are likely to continue through 2026 and that Zelenskyy is describing in public what Ukraine has been doing for months: making Russian airspace unreliable. Russia said it would prevent disruption to civil aviation. The delay boards in Moscow said otherwise.

Ukraine's own airspace has been closed to commercial traffic since the first week of the full-scale invasion. The new filing tries to export that closure. ICAO cannot ground aircraft by itself. Member states can. If enough of the states whose airlines still use Russian routes take the letter seriously, the remaining east-west tracks over Russia shrink. If they do not, the next incident will be argued after the fact, with this notice already on the file.

The concrete takeaway for a dispatcher in Istanbul or Dubai is not the Article 51 citation. It is the combination of 27 cancelled foreign flights, a UN agency willing to talk about crossfire, and a Ukrainian letter that will be Exhibit A if a civilian jet and a drone ever share a corridor.