Censor.NET says Air Arabia is mass-cancelling autumn flights to Russia; RIA Novosti says it resumes in October

The claim. Censor.NET, in Kyiv, reports that Air Arabia — which it calls the largest low-cost carrier in the Middle East and North Africa — has "begun mass-cancelling" its autumn flights to Russia. It dates this a week after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned airlines and insurers about flying to Russian airports. It names no source and gives no number of flights.

The counter-claim. RIA Novosti's headline states flatly that Air Arabia will resume flights to Russia in October. Life.ru carries the same October date but hedges it twice — the airline "preliminarily plans" a Sharjah–Moscow return — and attributes it to Russia's transport ministry. A second Life.ru report says the booking service Travelata has received no cancellation notices, on the word of a person described only as close to the tourism industry.

Not settled. Air Arabia is quoted in none of the four reports we hold. None gives a count of cancelled flights. None mentions the claim it contradicts. Whether the cancellations and the October date concern the same flights, we cannot say. We hold nothing from Sharjah and nothing from the UAE's aviation regulator.

What this is about. Whether a Gulf budget airline is still flying to Russia, at a time when flying there is caught up in a war.

How it got here.

• 2014: Russia annexed Crimea, and fighting began in eastern Ukraine.
• February 2022: Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• Also 2022: The European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada closed their airspace to Russian airlines. They also barred the sale and leasing of aircraft and parts to Russia. Russia closed its own airspace to their carriers in return. European and North American airlines stopped flying to Russia.
• Since then: Carriers from states that did not join those sanctions kept flying to Russia. That includes airlines from Turkey and the Gulf. For Russians, they became the main way out of the country by air.
• The war reached the airports. Ukraine has repeatedly sent drones deep into Russia, and Russian airports, Moscow's among them, have had to halt flights for periods. That makes the safety of civilian flights into Russia a live question.
• September 2026: Censor.NET reports that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned airlines and insurers about the risks of flying to Russian airports. We hold no other report of that warning.

The actors.

What is at stake. Suppose foreign airlines and their insurers decide that flying to Russia is too risky. Then Russians lose some of the few air routes left open to them, and Kyiv gets something it has pushed for. Suppose they keep flying. Then the routes that have survived since 2022 stay open.

Where it stands. Both Russian reports speak of flights resuming in October, which suggests the route is not being flown now. None of the four reports says why it stopped. Air Arabia has not been quoted in any of them.