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BTN News
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Tuesday, 16 May 2023
Oleg Patsulya, a Russian citizen living near Miami, USA, has been arrested - with a business partner - on charges of violating US export controls and helping Russia bypass sanctions to import US$14.4 million of US-made aircraft parts.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the USA and nearly 40 other governments have limited Moscow’s access to weapons, computer chips, aircraft parts and other products needed to fuel its economy and the war.
The sanctions cover aircraft and parts, but thousands of shipments of aircraft parts still were successfully sent into Russia last year, according to Russian Customs data sighted by the New York Times.
Carriers that benefited included Rossiya Airlines, Aeroflot, Ural Airlines, S7 Airlines, Utair Aviation and Pobeda Airlines.
More than 5,000 shipments carried copper wires, bolts, graphite and other parts marked as 'made in the United States by Boeing' over an eight-month period.
Aviation supply chain experts say the parts probably came from legitimate overseas stocks owned by airlines and from repair facilities, plus resellers that trade in scrapped parts.
Many of the products were routed through countries including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and China, according to the data, which also showed aircraft parts originating in the European Union including some marked as being manufactured or trademarked by Airbus.
Defects ignored
Aeroflot is telling its employees to stop recording equipment defects, meaning planes regularly fly with malfunctions, according to news outlet Proekt citing employees at the airline as sources.
The policy, in force since last northern spring, was introduced "to prevent aircraft being grounded due to a defect, which, according to regulations, prohibits the aircraft from flying until it is fixed”.
Other airlines in Russia also have adopted the same unofficial practice in order to keep aircraft flying.
Analysts say that Russian airlines had about 736 aircraft operating at the beginning of this year, but the number will fall by about 20 per cent each year as defects become too serious.