Canada Levies $24,000 in Fines for Alleged Russian Violation of Closed Airspace

Transport Canada has imposed $24,000 in fines after a plane carrying Russian nationals en route to Nunavut was stopped in Yellowknife last week. Canada closed its airspace to all Russian owned, operated and chartered aircraft on Feb. 27 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian national who chartered the plane — and its two pilots — were each handed fines of $3,000, according to Nunatsiaq News. The aircraft operator, Dunard Engineering Limited, was fined $15,000.

The plane has been cleared to leave Canadian airspace without its passengers.

Diane Archie, N.W.T.’s infrastructure minister, updated the legislature about the situation the next day, telling her colleagues that the people involved were travelling to Resolute as part of a High Arctic expedition, which appears to be a Russian-led project called TransGlobal Car.

According to the TransGlobal Car website, the expedition was “initiated” by Vasily Shakhnovsky, a former major shareholder in Yukos Oil, an oil company that was once based in Moscow.