A recent attack from the newly appointed Odessa governor and former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili on the State Aviation Service Administration of Ukraine blaming its chief for using his flight assignment powers to preserve a near-monopolistic grip on the market, while protecting interests of individual oligarchs has resulted in immediate action which could finally bring open skies to Ukraine.
The reciprocal bans have the potential to hit both nations' already struggling economies, reroute flights across a large part of Europe and lead to further economic disentanglement between the neighbouring states. Latest data from the World Bank's shows Ukraine's real GDP was expected to fall by over 7 per cent, making Russia and Ukraine the world's two worst-growing economies.
Ukraine is a huge market opportunity, but for many carriers there have been notable restrictions on air access. Negotiations on a full EU-Ukraine open skies agreement had reached a critical stage over the past couple of years, but have fallen on a more regional structure. This has initially seen the Ukraine Infrastructure Ministry allow the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to be linked directly to European Union destinations without any restrictions as a trial run.
