Russian government sets up working group to handle Georgia flights issue

The Russian government has set up a working group to coordinate the work with customers who booked flights to Georgia, a spokesperson for Russian deputy premier Maxim Akimov said on Friday.

Earlier that day, Russia suspended direct flights to Georgia starting from July 8 to ensure the safety of its citizens amid the unrest in the country.

"The Russian government has set up an operative working group to coordinate the work with customers of Russian air carriers performing flights to Georgia. The companies were instructed to open hotlines to provide tourists with information," the spokesperson said. "The Ministry of Transport and Rostourism [the Federal Agency for Tourism] were tasked with looking into the issue of passengers whose flights were supposed to take place after July 8. The matter is to be studied tomorrow [on Saturday]."

Russia’s civil aviation watchdog, Rosaviatsiya, will on Saturday convoke a meeting with air carriers to discuss the situation, a source in one of Russia’s air carriers said.

At present, regular flights to Georgia are carried out by Aeroflot, Ural Airlines, Smartavia (former Nordavia), Pobeda, Red Wings, and S7. The last four companies have already announced they were closing sales of tickets to Georgia and were ready to compensate their price to affected passengers.

Ural Airlines Director General Sergei Skuratov said his company, which performs daily flights to Georgia from Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities, would make the decision on Saturday.

"We will take out [passengers] until July 8, and will decide on [the suspension of flights] tomorrow. So far, the decision has not yet been made," he told TASS. "The losses are going to be fairly big."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree, which imposes a temporary ban on passenger flights with Georgia from July 8, the Kremlin press service reported. In addition, tour operators and travel agents are recommended "for the duration of the ban ... to refrain from selling a tourist product that includes transportation (including commercial one) of citizens from the territory of the Russian Federation to the territory of Georgia."

Tbilisi riots

On June 20, several thousand protesters converged on the parliament in downtown Tbilisi, demanding the resignation of the interior minister and the parliament’s speaker, and tried to storm the building. In response, police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators. According to Georgian media, dozens were detained, 240 people suffered injuries.

The protests were sparked by an uproar over a Russian State Duma delegation’s participation in the 26th session of the Inter-parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO). On Thursday morning, IAO President Gavrilov opened the session in the Georgian parliament building. Opposition lawmakers were outraged by the fact that Gavrilov addressed the event’s participants from the parliament speaker’s seat. In protest, they did not allow the IAO session to continue.

Later, a decision was taken to wrap up the session and for the Russian delegation to leave the country. Members of the ruling ‘Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia’ party said that they did not know that Gavrilov had been scheduled to open the event, claiming that the protocol office had made a mistake.

Secretary General of the ruling ‘Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia’ party and Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze announced on Friday that Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze had decided to tender his resignation.