Russia wants to evacuate 3,500 of its citizens from Bulgaria, who it claims are tourists, but cannot return due to the flight ban. For this purpose, it asked the Bulgarian government for an air corridor.

“I called the Minister of Tourism of Bulgaria Hristo Prodanov, we discussed the situation with Russian tourists who are in Bulgaria and have difficulty returning home.

According to our estimates, there are up to 3,500 Russians in Bulgaria today, including organized and independent tourists. While this issue is being resolved, I asked my colleague to help extend the stay of our tourists in local hotels, if not for free, then at least under the most acceptable conditions” - says the head of the state agency “Rostourism” Zarina Doguzova, quoted by “Komsomolskaya Pravda” - “The colleagueс offered to help organize an air corridor to transport Russian tourists.”

The Ministry of Tourism confirmed to Club Z that yesterday Minister Prodanov spoke with his Russian counterpart Doguzova, but did not make any commitment to a sanitary air corridor that would violate the EU's pan-European decision to close the EU skies to Russian aircraft.

Moreover, the ministry did not understand how the Russians counted 3,500 tourists (which will require approximately 10 passenger planes), since only 600 are registered in our accommodationс. Probably this number includes property owners in our country who are not worried about where to be sheltered but want to return to their homeland.

As the stay of most Russian tourists in our country has expired, with the assistance of tour operators it has been agreed that they will stay at the hotels until a solution is found. Most of them do not have the funds either, as their bank cards issued by Russian banks are blocked.

So far, the cheapest and practically feasible option is transportation to Istanbul by bus and from there by plane to Moscow. There are flights to Russia from Turkey, Israel, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and there are flights to Sofia from the first three destinations, but tickets are quite expensive, as all seats on flights to Moscow run out very quickly.

According to Rostourism, there are about 150,000 Russians abroad.

/ClubZ

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