After Vladimir Putin announced on September 21 that mobilization was being introduced in Russia, the Russians sold out all tickets for the most popular visa-free destinations on the same day.
The Insider analyzed data from the Aviasales website. As of September 21, there is no longer a single available flight to Istanbul – neither direct nor transit. There are also no direct tickets for September 21 to other cities in Turkey where there are airports – Antalya, Bodrum, Dalaman and Izmir.
Another popular destination for Russians is Armenia. There are airports in only two cities – in Yerevan and Gyumri. There are no flights on September 21 to both directions, neither direct nor transit. There are also no flights to Azerbaijan, which borders on it.
There are no direct or transit flights to the countries of Central Asia – Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The only exception is Kazakhstan. If you fly from Moscow on the evening of September 21, you can be in Almaty the very next morning. True, at the time of this writing, there was only one ticket left.
Even tickets for direct flights to Minsk were sold out. If you fly there on September 21 from Moscow or St. Petersburg, then you will be in Belarus only on September 23.
If we talk about less obvious countries open to Russians, then everything is exactly the same. There are no tickets for September 21 to Thailand, Israel and even Peru, where Russians can stay without a visa for 180 days. Moreover, tickets to Peru, namely to Lima, for the next two days cost from 820 thousand to a million rubles.
