Translated material
Why are planes still flying in Russia?
After the invasion of Ukraine, Western countries outlawed Russian civil aviation. In particular, a ban was introduced on the supply of spare parts for the Russian aircraft fleet, the basis of which is foreign aircraft - in terms of the number of aircraft at the beginning of the war this was approximately two-thirds, in terms of passenger traffic - approximately 95%. Russian airlines had two options. The first is to dismantle some of the planes into parts. The authorities said that approximately 30% of the fleet could be dismantled and this should be enough until 2025. The second was to use non-original spare parts, but this meant leaving the international flight safety system: such an aircraft, most likely, would not be accepted by any airport other than Russian.
It seems that life has taken the third path - parallel imports. “Important Stories” analyzed customs data and found that from March 2022 to March 2023, at least 18 billion rubles worth of original spare parts for Boeing and Airbus were imported into the country.
Who sells
Russian airlines that need spare parts have many ways to circumvent sanctions. The easiest one is to buy them in a “friendly” country (that is, not in the West). The leaders in our sample are the United Arab Emirates (UAE, more than 9 billion rubles), China (5 billion) and Türkiye (2 billion).
The champion is the Dubai company Ats Heavy Equipment & Machinery. In just over a year, it made more than 700 deliveries to Russia worth 3.9 billion rubles. Basically, spare parts for Boeing and Airbus went to the Aeroflot group, which, in addition to Aeroflot itself, includes the companies Rossiya and Pobeda.
The beneficiary of Ats Heavy Equipment & Machinery is a citizen of Jordan, Mohammad Altahine. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has been working for Jordanian Aerospace Technical Services since 2015. The company has been supplying spare parts for Boeing and Airbus for 20 years; its clients include the largest European, Arab and Turkish airlines. The owner of Aerospace Technical Services is Jordanian citizen Al-Khair Tahina .
Ats Heavy Equipment & Machinery did not respond to requests from Important Stories.
Foreign sellers, top 10
| Ats Heavy Equipment & Machinery, UAE | 3.9 billion | Mohammad Altahine | “Yakutia”, “Izhavia”, “Pobeda”, “Russia”, “Yamal”, “Aeroflot”, “Red Wings”, S7, “Nordstar”, “I Fly”, “Eurasian Technology Alliance” |
| Xi'an Aerotek Aviation Supplies Co, China | 2 billion | Zhang Xuejun | Aeroflot |
| Na Havacilik Ve Teknik Tıcaret Limited Sirketi, Türkiye | 1.8 billion | "North Wind", "Icarus", "NV Technician" | |
| Steel Design, UAE | 1.7 billion | "Aviatech" | |
| Griffon FZC, UAE | 1.3 billion | Ilya Rysev, Irina Gorokhovskaya | "Protector" (formerly "Proparts") |
| Hailan Import & Export Co, China (Hong Kong) | 1 billion | Xiao Long, He Sui | "Longway" |
| Desert Sun Supply FZE, UAE | 0.9 billion | "Association of Suppliers", "Protector" | |
| Trade One Middle East FZE, UAE | 0.7 billion | Aeroflot, Nordstar, Protector (formerly Proparts), Pobeda | |
| Drayton Aerospace Industries Co, China | 0.5 billion | Aeroflot, Pobeda, Rossiya, UTair, Nordstar | |
| Skyparts FZCO, UAE | 0.4 billion | "Ural Airlines", "S7 engineering" |
In this case, the supplier may be foreign, and its owners are Russians. For example, Griffon (UAE) is in the top 10. According to Sayari, its beneficiaries are Irina Gorokhovskaya and Ilya Rysev. They graduated from the All-Russian Academy of Foreign Trade and worked there. Rysev established two companies in Russia - Simplex and Ameritech , which supply aircraft parts. Gorokhovskaya worked at Simplex as the head of the logistics department.
Rysev forwarded questions from “Important Stories” to Griffon Managing Director Andrey Ulyashev. He first wrote that the company did not sell Western spare parts to Russia, because “the bank does not allow such payments,” and when “Important Stories” sent him a list of supplies, he stopped responding.
You don't have to look that far for suppliers. Since the beginning of the war, the Moldavian Max Jet Service has sent 0.5 billion rubles worth of aircraft parts to Russia, including for Boeing and Airbus. The founder of Max Jet Service, Sergei Ranga, refused to talk on the merits, but sent in response to a request a quote from the column of the editor-in-chief of “Important Stories” in connection with declaring the publication undesirable: “Dark times have come in Russia. You can only survive them together. And don’t forget: we are responsible not only for our own fate, but also for the fate of future generations. It depends on us what kind of country we will hand over to them.”
Surprisingly, there are suppliers of sanctioned aircraft parts even in “unfriendly” Europe - they have intermediaries from the CIS at their service, who will place an order for themselves that will end up in Russia.
Thus, judging by customs data, the Russian airline Air Fly bought aircraft parts from the Lithuanian Right Direction Aero - spare parts from European and American manufacturers, including for Boeing, for more than 145 million rubles. The parts are varied - from temperature sensors to the toilet bowl, screws and nuts.
Director and owner of Right Direction Aero is Pavel Chalapov. He wrote to “Important Stories” that he did not sell anything to the Russian “I-Fly”. Chalapov “hates the Putin regime and Russian aggression”, does not make deals with Russia, thoroughly checks his clients for connections with Russia and obliges them to sign declarations that they will not resell spare parts to people and companies under sanctions.
“Important Stories” sent Chalapov a list of supplies. Chalapov explained that he sold these parts not to the Russian “I Fly”, but to the Kyrgyz company “Cargoline” (and provided scans of cargo and export declarations for several goods as proof). The customs databases indeed indicate that the Lithuanian Right Direction Aero sold Air Fly goods on behalf of Cargoline. It seems that according to the documents, the spare parts were going to Kyrgyzstan, but in reality they were going to Russia.
“The owner and CEO of the company [Cargoline] Azamat Alkadyrov convinced us by providing personal guarantees that he has no connections with sanctioned markets and Russia. <...> We sold them aircraft parts on the condition that they would not be able to re-export them to Russia. <...> As I see, “Cargoline” kept us in the dark, deceived us and, apparently, forged documents,” Chalapov is indignant (he writes that now he no longer works with Kyrgyzstan, not only with Russia).
Cargoline was registered a month after the war in Ukraine began, when Airbus, Boeing and other parts manufacturers banned Russian airlines. The director and owner was Azamat Alkadyrov, a former mediocre Kyrgyz official . In July 2023, the United States imposed sanctions against Cargoline.
Azamat Alkadyrov read the questions from “Important Stories” on WhatsApp and did not answer them.
From customs data it follows that the Lithuanian Right Direction Aero is not the only company from which the Kyrgyz Cargoline bought spare parts to supply the Russian Air Fly. In particular, the Apram Aerospace company from the Czech Republic supplied aircraft parts to Air Fly and other Russian companies both before and during the war. Apram Aerospace has been on the market since 2012, the owners of the company are Czech citizens Alena Šimečkova and Milan Kočan. In her LinkedIn profile, Šimečková indicated that she worked for Kočan’s other Czech company, also involved in the supply of aircraft parts, Job Air Logistics .
Shimechkova, Kochan and Apram Aerospace managers ignored all attempts by Important Stories to get their comments.
Who's buying
One of the main buyers of aircraft parts in Russia is the Moscow company Protector. In 2022, the sanction year, its revenue increased almost 200 times - to 4.6 billion rubles. Obviously, spare parts for Boeing played a role here - Protector purchased them for about 2 billion rubles in order to resell them to the Russian airlines UTair, Pobeda, S7 and others.
The owner and general director of Protector is 25-year-old Ekaterina Provotorova; nothing is known about its relationship with aviation. But her husband Pavel Provotorov worked for Rusline Airlines and was a co-owner of the companies Fastair International ( under US sanctions) and Gangnam, which were engaged in customs clearance of cargo and trade in equipment, machinery, ships and aircraft. In the GetContact phone application, Provotorov is listed as the head of Protector, as well as Pavel Aircraft Parts, Pavel Spare Parts, Pavel Aircraft and Pasha USA.
The main suppliers of Boeing parts for the Protector, according to customs data, were three companies from the UAE - Trade One Middle East, Desert Sun Supply and the already mentioned Griffon; all three companies are included in our top 10 suppliers of aircraft parts to Russia.
Pavel Provotorov promised to tell “Important Stories” about sanctions, the aircraft parts market and his companies, but has not yet responded.
Russian buyers, top 10
| Aeroflot | 4.6 billion | Russian Federation |
| "Russia" | 2.4 billion | Russian Federation |
| "Trans capital" | 2.2 billion | Mutual Fund "Modern Innovations" |
| "Tread" | 2.1 billion | Ekaterina Provotorova |
| "Toir Systems" (formerly "Aviatech") | 1.7 billion | Elena Evdokimova, Denis Belov |
| "NV Technician" | 1.6 billion | Karine Boukrey |
| "Victory" | 1.4 billion | Russian Federation |
| "Longway" | 1 billion | Evgeny Lebedev, Andrey Belik, Evgeny Tokarchuk, Nikolay Shevelev, Felix Grinberg |
| "Northwest" | 1 billion | "Istunion" |
| Ural Helicopter Company | 0.9 billion | Dmitry Danshchikov |
How is this possible
Huge companies, be it Boeing, Airbus or, for example, electronics manufacturers, are not able to completely control the distribution of their goods. Generally speaking, they don’t even have the appropriate apparatus: they are created for something else - to sell as many goods as possible to as many clients as possible, and preferably at a higher price. If one of these clients sells a sanctioned aircraft part or microchip directly or through an intermediary to Russia or Iran, they have little chance of knowing about it. And if there are several intermediaries in the chain, there is almost no chance.
Therefore, all such companies respond to journalists’ requests “how is it that your products go to Russia?” they answer the same thing: “At the beginning of 2022, the company suspended the provision of spare parts, maintenance and technical support to customers and service providers in Russia. We continue to comply with U.S. sanctions and global laws and regulations.” This was Boeing's response to "Important Stories." Airbus did not respond, but the text would have been approximately the same. “Important Stories” receives the same answers from other world giants, for example, from manufacturers of microelectronics on which Russian rockets fly.
Support Important Stories This will help us continue to tell the truth. Support“There is an erosion of responsibility. A person who resold equipment, for example, in the UAE, has the right not to know that from there it will go to Russia, says Ilya Shumanov, general director of Transparency International Russia. — Formally, people comply with the requirements, but the further along the chain the product is resold, the less likely it is that the requirements will be met. The further you are from the supplier, the weaker the control over the chain. Intermediaries can earn tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a transaction, and there are only a few cases where they were punished for this. And how can one punish a mediator in Tajikistan? He will close one company and open a new one.”
The state should monitor such things. But in the United States, where there is criminal liability for violating sanctions, the number of such cases is very small. Perhaps the first time that illegal supplies of spare parts to Boeing and Airbus became the subject of criminal proceedings was in May of this year. Two Russians were arrested in the United States: Oleg Patsulya and Vasily Besedin, they were accused of violating American export controls. According to the US Department of Justice, they organized a chain of intermediary companies in the US and Turkey to supply Russian airlines with sanctioned parts for Boeing and Airbus aircraft. They face up to 20 years in prison.
In Europe, criminal liability for violation of sanctions exists in individual countries, but there are also few cases . In the European Union as a whole, such responsibility is just about to be introduced.