Russia’s Regional Air Carriers in Trouble, Isolating Many Distant Population Points

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 10 – In much of the Russian Federation, there are no all weather roads or railways connecting population points with each other and the outside world, a situation that forces many people to rely on regional air carriers when rivers aren’t frozen and unpaved roads are impassable.

            But now most of these carriers are in trouble, the victims of falling subsidies and rising ticket prices, on the one hand, and an increasing number of crashes and cancellations, on the other. In response, Moscow has announced that it will inspect 51 of such carriers over the next year (svpressa.ru/economy/article/485432/).

            However, in the absence of the infusion of new money to improve safety and ensure that these carriers have lower prices and continue to operate, this inspection is likely to do little more than provide new details on just how bad this situation has become since Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine.

            And that situation is dire indeed, both for the population and for Moscow. The residents of these distant cities will suffer because they will not get the goods and services they need or even access to needed medical care, at a time when Putin’s health care “optimization” program has eliminated hospitals in many of them.

            And Moscow will face new challenges from these cities who will have even more reason than in the past to see the central government not as their last line of defense but as their enemy and turn to opposition leaders who call for a return to the subsidies of the Soviet era or increasing control over their tax revenues, most of which go to Moscow and don’t return.