For information, here is the translated answer from the German Ministry of transport that my aero club got after they asked them “what to do with our russian student pilot”:
Your student pilot, who has Russian citizenship, is affected by the sanctions. Accordingly, it is no longer possible to continue training to acquire, renew or extend a pilot’s license for the duration of the applicable sanctions. In this context, the sanctions also apply to the activity of the flight instructor who holds an FCL/SFCL-compliant license and rating. Accordingly, he is prohibited from conducting any form of training and verification for holders of Russian citizenship. As a result, the training of your named student pilot must be suspended until further notice. The consideration of who holds the PIC status does not lead to a different result in this context.
It’s interesting how such UK+EU rule got implemented, I was 100% of how this rule will get interpreted by UK, Germany and France…I have lived few years in each country to figure out the exact answer without even looking:
- Germany: we now have a minister of transport replying like a machine that the rule is the rule and by definition the rules have no exceptions
- France: from DGAC, the rule is from EU, we don’t think it affects you and take my word for it, no one bothers to re-write rules in France
- UK: apply EU rule, make it our own UK rule then make all sort of exceptions and written guidances
Peter wrote:
Is a Russian passport necessary for travelling to Russia?
In short, yes. Otherwise you will have to get a visa every time you go there. And they can always refuse (likely).
Peter wrote:
On the wider aspect of EuroGA, has everybody stopped flying?
No! Just had .9hrs of circuits today. Windy, to put it mildly. Mostly headwind on final, but very gusty, 12-15 gusting to 20-25, 12G25 is interesting.
The UK government should have regarded the attacks on Litvinenko and Skripal as acts of war, in my view. It showed enormous weakness to take no real action.
Something caused Russia to decide to destroy large facility involved in chemical weapons production called Shikhany. It was completely broken into small pieces of rubble, then the rubble was put through high temperature incinerators, then the topsoil was incinerated too.
It sounded like a lot of work, and not the sort of thing you would do if you were just shutting up shop.
Graham wrote:
The UK government should have regarded the attacks on Litvinenko and Skripal as acts of war, in my view. It showed enormous weakness to take no real action.
That is if you consider an optimistic (kind of) scenario that a head of state gave the order. Another scenario, supported by some of former (now exile) security services people, is that it was just a private initiative. And that is much more scary.
Malibuflyer wrote:
In terms of Russian pilots flying for European AOCs there is nothing to fix – it is still allowed.
That was exactly what I wrote in the first sentence you quoted, was it not!? My question was rather, why is is allowed? Maybe one of those horrible Russians will use their aircraft as a weapon?
Yes it leads to some collateral damage (as wars always do) but it is easy to communicate and implement.
It would take a very long stroke of a pen to do otherwise […..]
Again: It clearly is an unintended consequence that some people like mayday have to pause their glider training for some weeks or months – but in the grand scheme of things looking at all the suffering the Russians have brought upon Europe it is really negligible harm.
We clearly have very different views both on human rights and on the effect of punishing people who very likely left their country because they don’t like the situation there, so it seems there is nothing more to discuss,.
mayday_allday wrote:
I am currently considering other ways around – sue the German Ministry of transport, or appeal to the German commissioner for human rights, or go to the press…
You can try all of that – but with little success. Flying a glider is not a human right, making differences between people of different citizenship is not racism and during a war it is not uncommon to sanction the party that is responsible for the war (and yes, all of its citizens even if some of them also don’t support the war). Peter made an excellent point about what happened to German citizens (and partly is still happening) although not all Germans have been Nazis (although the majority has been). That’s what happens in war.
The only thing such initiatives can do – if the become public – is to shed a devastating light on us as GA community: People are suffering, fleeing, dying and all the glider pilots have to do is to create additional workload on people who could do better things because they can’t do their hobby for some weeks. Really?
I cannot answer better than Airborne_Again already did, and he was right about me. I agree with him – we have very different views on human rights and punishments, so continuing the discussion in this direction is pointless.
Airborne_Again wrote:
people who very likely left their country because they don’t like the situation there,
I can’t talk about the Russian community in Sweden – but in Germany the situation might be different.
It is not at all the case that the Russian community in Germany “left their country because they don’t like the” political “situation there”. To the opposite: Many members of the Russian community in Germany are amongst the strongest supporters of Mr. Putin. They left Russia for purely economic reasons because for some of them it has been extremely easy to do so if they have some German ancestors. Many of them actually plan to go back to Russia as comparatively wealthy seniors at some point in time – and that is the reason why they don’t give up Russian citizenship which is comparatively easy to do.
We have the same situation in Germany with some parts of the Turkish population who are extremely pro Erdogan…
I’m not at all presuming that mayday is one of these Russians, but that is exactly my point: It is practically impossible and we do not want to put every Russian under a test of attitude to decide whether he is a “good Russian” or a “bad Russian”.
Compared to everything Russia does – and given that our administrations have much better and more urgent things to do than to take care of some people unhappy they have to discontinue glider training during a war, the current solution is not fair in every individual case but it is simple, clear and creates the least effort on those who have more importantnt things to do.
I agree that under the circumstances somebody complaining that they can’t take flying lessons might expect little sympathy. However, as problems go it is one that would be trivial to rectify, and therefore should be.
I’d be curious to know if there are other impacts on people with Russian nationality unconnected to the administration from the sanctions?
