Russia resumes direct flights to Cuba

MOSCOW. July 3 (Interfax) - Direct flights from Russia to Cuba were launched on July 1, the Russian government said on its Telegram channel.

"Rossiya Airlines is performing flights to the Cuban resort of Varadero on Boeing 777 wide-body jets," the government said.

Initially, the flights will be performed twice a week, on Thursdays and Saturdays. The program of flights will be expanded in the future depending on the demand.

The government expects that thanks to this step the total passenger traffic on both charter and regular flights could reach about 150,000 people in the end of 2023, which is comparable with the figures recorded before the pandemic.

"Cuba is Russia's key partner in Central America, and the need to continue developing economic relations between our countries is quite logical," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko said.

The decision was made at an order of the Russian president and announced during a visit of the Russian delegation led by Chernyshenko and Aeroflot CEO Sergei Alexandrovsky to Cuba at a meeting of the Russian-Cuban intergovernmental commission in May 2023, the government's Telegram channel said.

Flights between Russia and Cuba are one of the oldest international destinations in Aeroflot's history. According to the company, the first regular flight to Cuba was performed in 1962. Since then, air travel between the two countries was halted twice, during the Covid-19 pandemic and after the anti-Russian sanctions imposed in 2022.