Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg, Russia, temporarily closed its airspace on Tuesday morning following unconfirmed reports that an unidentified object, possibly a drone, had been sighted flying over it, reported British media outlet Independent. The city’s government released a statement on its official Telegram channel announcing the closure and suspending all flights until 12 pm local time (9 am GMT). Flight Radar website data indicated that several domestic flights headed for St. Petersburg were turning back to their destinations. The suspension also affected flights en route to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which requires planes to fly over St Petersburg.
According to the state-run news agency TASS, the airspace within a 200-km (124-mile) radius of Pulkovo was closed until 1:20 pm local time. Although officials did not give a reason for the suspension, an unconfirmed report from the online Russian news outlet Baza suggested that fighter jets had been dispatched to investigate an unidentified object spotted in the sky. Earlier, the RIA Novosti news agency had reported that an unidentified object had been seen, prompting the initial closure. However, they later stated that the jets had not found anything.
By noon local time, FlightRadar24 showed that flights had resumed flying towards St. Petersburg. The closure occurred amid heightened security concerns in the Kremlin, given Vladimir Putin’s ongoing illegal war in Ukraine. On Monday, anti-Russia activists in Belarus claimed that they had used drones to shoot down one of the Russian president’s spy planes, the AWACS Beriev A-50U aircraft, valued at around £274m. The Belarusian Hajun project reported that the aircraft was “significantly damaged,” and that central parts of the aircraft, its avionics, and radar antennae had been hit.
Meanwhile, low-cost airline Wizz Air on Monday confirmed that it would suspend all flights to and from Moldova due to safety concerns. The announcement followed the firing of a Russian missile over Moldovan airspace earlier in February. The Hungarian budget airline issued a statement, indicating that passenger and crew safety remains its top priority. Wizz Air made the “difficult but responsible decision” to suspend all flights to the Moldovan capital, Chișinău, from March 14, citing the elevated but not immediate risk in the country’s airspace.