Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 23/03/2022
Some websites claimed that the Serbian airline Air Serbia had suspended all flights to Moscow. That did not happen.
On March 16, 2022, the website Oslobodjenje published an article about the flights of the Serbian airline Air Serbia to Russia. The article is entitled:
Air Serbia has suspended all flights to Moscow
The Belarusian media Nexta is mentioned as a source of information that this airline has suspended flights to Moscow.
The Serbian airline has suspended all flights to Moscow.
NEXTA states on its Twitter profile that the airline from Serbia allegedly suspended all flights to Moscow.
The article was shared by BH portal and TK danas, and the claim that Air Serbia suspended flights to Moscow was also featured in the blog on the website 24 sata, which regularly shares information about the war in Ukraine, and also in the title of the article published on the Croatian version of the Macedonian website called Sloboden pecat .
Air Serbia suspends flights to Moscow due to pressure
The title published on this website does not specify if “all” flights have been suspended, and this is not mentioned in the article itself. Instead, it is stated that “Air Serbia will fly to Moscow eight times a week, and possibly twice to St. Petersburg in the form of a charter flight, as was the case before the Ukrainian crisis.” The title leads to the conclusion that flights on the route Belgrade – Moscow have been suspended.
The websites Politicki and BH vijesti have equipped their articles on this topic with headlines in which the claim that Air Serbia is suspending flights to Moscow is stated in the form of questions.
Air Serbia suspends flights to Russia?
These articles state that the claims about the alleged suspension of flights came from “Russian and Ukrainian media”, but it is also pointed out that it is unclear whether there was a complete suspension or return to the flight schedule before the Russian aggression on Ukraine”. However, from the article itself, it is clear that there was no suspension of flights.
What are the facts?
On February 24, 2022, Russia began invading Ukraine by attacking several cities. Three days later, the European Union banned flights of Russian airlines to member countries. A day later, on February 28, Russia closed its airspace to 36 countries, including all EU member states.
After the mentioned sanctions were introduced, the Serbian airline Air Serbia increased the number of flights to Russia. Serbia is not a member of the European Union, so the imposed sanctions do not apply to it. According to the Guardian in an article from March 11, 2022, the doubled number of flights of this company to Moscow served as a “back door” for Russians to come to European countries and leave Russia. Ukrainian officials criticized this move of the airline.
On March 15, 2022, the Russian daily Kommersant published an article claiming that Air Serbia had canceled flights to Moscow. The article has since been amended, and now it states that the number of flights has been reduced.
As stated in its article, the website Oslobodjenje refers to the Twitter post of the Belarusian media Nexta from March 16, 2022, in which it is claimed that Air Serbia flights to and from Russia have been canceled.
Some Ukrainian media, such as the Kyiv Independent, claimed the same. However, according to the data available at the time of writing this analysis, this is not true.
Our partner website from Serbia, Fakenews tragac, dealt with the claim that Air Serbia’s flights to Moscow were canceled in an analysis from March 22, 2022.
According to the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, the number of flights on the route Belgrade – Moscow, from March 21, 2022, should have been returned to the initial number that existed before the war in Ukraine.
The Serbian Ministry of the Interior, reported several false reports of alleged explosive devices on flights from Belgrade to Moscow in March. The flights were not suspended on March 16, as stated by the mentioned media, and this can be concluded based on the fact that, according to the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, one of the false bomb reports on the flight from Belgrade to Moscow was received on March 17, 2022, while on March 16, 2022, it had received two.
The website Flightradar24 tracks flights globally and provides “real-time information on thousands of aircraft around the world.” According to the data from this website, Air Serbia planes flew to Moscow after March 16, and at the time of writing, they were still flying. Therefore, between March 16 and March 21, this airline had a total of five flights on the route Belgrade – Moscow.
Tickets for Air Serbia flights from Belgrade to Moscow could have been booked at the time of writing. So, for example, on the flight scheduled for March 23, 2022, according to the data on the official website of this airline, only one more seat was available on March 21.
There are also no flight cancellation notices on Air Serbia’s official website. The only two announcements related to flights to and from the Russian Federation were published on February 28 and March 9, and they refer to the longer duration of flights to Russia, i.e., the purchase of Air Serbia tickets from Russia.
Therefore, the claims about the suspension of Air Serbia’s flights to Moscow, published on March 16, 2022, are unfounded. The websites Oslobodjenje and BH vijesti, which initially published these claims, published articles (1, 2) a day later, on March 17, stating that “the chances that the number of departures to Russia will be reduced soon are high”.
Given all the facts, we assess the claim suggesting that the airline Air Serbia is “suspending flights to Moscow”, first published in the title of the article on the website Sloboden pecat, as fake news. Other publications of the same claim receive the rating for the distribution of fake news.
The title of the article published on Sloboden pecat also receives a clickbait rating, since the claim that “Air Serbia is suspending flights to Moscow due to pressure” is not stated in the article itself.
The titles of the articles published on Politicki and BH vijesti receive a clickbait rating, given that they were manipulatively formulated in the form of questions, while the articles themselves state that there were no flight interruptions.