Ukraine said early on Thursday it had restricted civilian flights in its airspace due to “potential hazard”, hours after a conflict zone monitor warned airlines should stop overflights over the risk of an unintended shootdown or cyber attack.
The notice to airmen from Ukraine’s authorities, issued at 0156 GMT on Thursday, is due to expire at 2359 GMT on Thursday unless extended. It did not specify whether the restriction was a total ban on civilian flights. An El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Toronto made a sudden U-turn out of Ukraine’s airspace around the time a notice to airmen was issued, citing the restrictions, according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.
A LOT of Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to Kyiv also turned back to Warsaw around the same time. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine aimed at demilitarizing the country but not to occupy it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered an address earlier Wednesday, spoken mostly in Russian, in which he warned that the Kremlin had nearly 200,000 soldiers and thousands of armored vehicles on the border ready to attack his country after Putin had already recognized two occupied regions, the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic, as independent and tasked troops to go into those areas as so-called peacekeepers.
