OREANDA-NEWS. The Russian air cargo group "Volga-Dnepr" began to fly around Belarus, writes RBC with reference to data from the FlightRadar24 service.

According to media reports, a private company owned by Alexei Isaykin stopped using the republic's airspace on June 22: now its planes fly through the Baltic countries. The group's representative confirmed that Volga-Dnepr made such a decision for a time, since the head office of the largest Russian air carrier of cargo is registered in the Netherlands. The organization follows the order of the British authorities, which prohibited cooperation with the air navigation service provider Belaeronavigatsia.

There is no confirmation of this information from the departments yet.

In early June, EU countries and some other states banned their airlines from flying over Belarus. In addition, Belarusian aircraft cannot use the EU airspace and land at the airports of the countries - members of the integration association.

These measures were agreed upon after a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius on May 23 urgently landed at the Minsk airport due to a message about mines, which turned out to be false. The founder of the Telegram channel Nexta, recognized in the republic as extremist, Roman Protasevich, was removed from the flight. He is charged with several crimes, including organizing riots.

Western countries criticized the incident and said that the plane was forced to land, they are preparing new sanctions against Belarus. Minsk, in turn, asserts that there was no coercion, and presented a transcript of the negotiations with the pilot of the aircraft, it does not contain any threats to the crew.