Kyiv apologises for El Al Russian payment claim
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, has issued an apology after accusing El Al Israel Airlines (LY, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion) of bypassing international sanctions on Russia by accepting funds through the Russian payment platform Mir, The Times of Israel and other local media reported.
Kuleba had alleged in a tweet on March 7 that Israel’s national carrier was continuing to accept payments via Mir, which was launched in December 2015. In the tweet he attached a screenshot of a booking page showing the system’s logo alongside Mastercard and Visa.
“While the world sanctions Russia for its barbaric atrocities in Ukraine, some prefer to make money soaked in Ukrainian blood,” he claimed. “Immoral and a blow to Ukrainian-Israeli relations.”
El Al rejected the accusation, insisting it had stopped accepting Mir payments on February 28, four days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. It added that it was unfortunate Kuleba had not scrutinized the issue more closely before posting his “misleading tweet” and said its aircraft had been carrying humanitarian aid to Ukraine and had also taken refugees to Israel.
Kuleba then deleted the original tweet, acknowledging on March 8: “Indeed, the Mir payment button remained on the website but the use of it was blocked. I am grateful to El Al for its important humanitarian operations and convey my apologies.” The system’s logo has now vanished altogether from the El Al website.
El Al has faced some criticism for continuing to operate its scheduled route between Tel Aviv Ben Gurion and Moscow Domodedovo while most western carriers have suspended flights to Russia. According to the ch-aviation schedules module, the route is operated 6x weekly using a B737-900(ER), and Flightradar24 ADS-B data shows that most of these flights have gone ahead as planned.
On March 9, the Israeli parliament’s finance committee approved a “state guarantee framework” for the country’s carriers to operate flights to and from Russia, amounting to USD2.5 billion and valid for up to three months. Airlines had said that their insurance policies stipulated that no insurance coverage would be given to their flights to Russia due to the widespread sanctions. El Al is currently the only Israeli passenger carrier that operates to Russia.
“Last week we approved a state guarantee that expires today, and there is a request to extend the guarantee by three months in light of the fact that there are many Israelis and Jews in Russia, and we, as a country, are committed to them,” said the committee’s chairman Alex Kushnir.