According to intelligence data, 109 foreign-made aircraft and another 230 Soviet-era planes aged between 40 and 60 years will be withdrawn from service. More than 200 helicopters, most of them Russian-made, are also expected to be decommissioned.
Currently, Russian carriers operate 1,135 aircraft, of which only 1,088 are still flying. The rest have already been dismantled for spare parts. If the current trend continues, Russia could lose nearly half of its civil aviation fleet within five years.
The main reason is the sanctions, which have made full technical maintenance of foreign-made aircraft impossible. For older Soviet planes, Russia’s aviation authority is simply extending their service life to up to 60 years without properly assessing their technical condition. The same approach has been applied to extending the service life of SaM-146 engines used in Superjets.
The intelligence report notes that Russia’s plans to ramp up domestic aircraft production have failed. Between 2022 and 2025, Russian manufacturers delivered only 13 new aircraft instead of the planned 120. In 2025, of the 15 aircraft scheduled for delivery, only one was actually handed over by the factories.
To compensate for the shortage, Moscow has been trying to lease planes abroad. After refusals from Kazakhstan, Qatar, Kuwait, and Ethiopia, Russian airlines began using internal reserves.
The cargo carrier Volga-Dnepr transferred eight Boeing aircraft to Aeroflot, which will be dismantled for spare parts to keep the rest of the fleet operational.
Amid this technical decline, international pressure is growing. In its latest resolution, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) accused Russia of destabilizing global air navigation through systematic GPS interference and urged it to stop violations of international aviation law.
Russian aviation is on the brink of collapse
Earlier, Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service reported that by 2026, Russia’s civil aviation fleet could shrink by more than half due to a chronic shortage of spare parts caused by international sanctions.
It was also reported that Moscow appealed to the ICAO to ease the sanctions imposed after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Russian side is requesting the lifting of restrictions on the supply of spare parts for civil aircraft, claiming that these measures reduce flight safety.