At least 927 Russians flew to their country on Sunday from the resort of Varadero, in western Cuba, where some had to suspend their vacations to return hastily, due to the international blockade of Russian planes as a sanction for the invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, Cuban official media reported that the 5,570 Russians who were on the island on vacation will return on charter flights from the Nordwind airline, after this airline, as well as Aeroflot and Azur Air, suspended the sale of tickets last Sunday. and its regular flights to the island.
An official from the Juan Gualberto Gómez International Airport in Varadero informed the press that on Sunday 927 Russian passengers flew to Moscow on two flights, including a group that arrived from the Dominican Republic.
Another 940 tourists will depart on Monday on two more flights, the airport official added.
“We arrived on February 25, we simply had to give up five days of vacation and nobody will return our money,” Alexei Nekrashevich, a 48-year-old tourist who traveled to the island with his wife, told AFP annoyed.
With a tanned face, Nekrashevich, who has visited the paradisiacal Cuban beaches four times, added that his trip ended abruptly “because of the situation there (in Ukraine). This has to do with the sanctions and all that” that have imposed on Russia for the invasion of its neighboring country, he said.
“It is unfortunate that we had to fly a little earlier and that we did not have enough rest, as if to say, what to do?”, he asks with indignation.
interrupted vacation
The atmosphere in which the Russians arrived in buses at the air station is far from the relaxation characteristic of the end of a vacation. In the room to document their luggage, serious expressions and silence prevailed.
“Yes, we had to interrupt the vacations, but we are not interested in politics,” said another Russian curtly who refused to give her name and who arrived at the airport with a group that was vacationing in the Dominican Republic, from where she moved to Cuba to return to Russia.
More than 14,000 Russian tourists and 1,900 Ukrainians were stranded in the Dominican Republic, in the midst of the war between the two countries and the restriction of flights, the government of that Caribbean country reported last Wednesday.
Dominican Republic authorities guaranteed the lodging of all these tourists until they find a definitive solution for their return.
Last Sunday, the 27 countries of the European Union closed their air spaces to Russian companies and aircraft as a sanction for the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow’s forces.
In turn, Russia responded with a similar measure. All these restrictions complicate the situation of thousands of travelers around the world.
During his State of the Union address to his Congress on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden also announced a ban on Russian flights in US airspace.
Nordwind will carry out four weekly charter flights from Moscow to the Cuban tourist hubs of Varadero and Cayo Coco, in the west and center of the island, respectively.
Russians are the foreign visitors with the most presence on the island.
The arrival of visitors of that nationality to Cuba has increased almost 200% since 2019, helping the island’s battered tourism industry, which collapsed with the pandemic and the strengthening of US sanctions.
