While Russia’s war in Ukraine has become a regular story in European and world media, its physical connections with the wider world have become severely restricted. Now reliant on railways and roads to transport both people and goods, the war-torn nation now dreams of a future in which airplanes will no longer bring destruction and death.

My last visit to Kyiv was on February 16th, 2022. It was the day that American intelligence determined to be the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities an initiative called “Reconciliation” was held on that day as well. It was meant to “strengthen the consolidation of the Ukrainian society, increase its resilience when faced with growing hybrid and propaganda threats as well as the psychological pressure that was being put on the Ukrainian society”, as stated by the president’s decree “On urgent means to consolidate the Ukrainian society”’ issued two days prior.

There is no industry of civil aviation in Ukraine since February 24th. The sky has been “closed” and the Russian invaders continue to destroy the country’s infrastructure. In order to get the industry running, it is not enough to simply “open the sky”, as was the case after the quarantine due to the pandemic.

The violation of the Treaty on Open Skies is just yet another example of the Russian attitude to international arms control treaties.