{"id":558828,"date":"2025-11-09T06:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T06:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/558828\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T06:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T06:44:11","slug":"anger-as-38m-is-spent-on-plane-imports-from-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/558828\/","title":{"rendered":"Anger as \u00a338m is spent on plane imports from Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government is trying to establish whether a multi-million-pound purchase of aircraft from Russia broke the UK\u2019s sanctions regime, after being alerted to the matter by The Observer.<\/p>\n

The Department for Business and Trade\u2019s own figures show that the UK imported \u00a380m in Russian goods in the year to June 2025, an increase of 21.2% on the previous year. Nearly half \u2013 \u00a336.3m \u2013 came from spending on Russian aircraft.<\/p>\n

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Officials were unable to confirm who had made the purchase or whether it was permissible under the UK\u2019s sanctions regime, which bans the purchase of aviation goods and technology and \u201cgoods which generate significant revenues for Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

A government spokesperson said: \u201cFailing to comply with sanctions is an offence punishable through large financial penalties or even criminal prosecution, and we take reports of UK companies not complying with them very seriously. We encourage anyone who believes a company may have breached trade sanctions to report this to the Government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, defence secretary John Healey said Russian president Vladimir Putin viewed Britain as his \u201cNo 1 enemy\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is thought to be the first time aircraft have been imported from Russia to the UK since sanctions were imposed as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, although in February it emerged that British firms were among those to have exported aircraft parts to India that reached Russia.<\/p>\n

The Liberal Democrats\u2019 foreign affairs spokesman, Calum Miller, said there were \u201cserious security concerns\u201d about the planes being in the UK, adding: \u201cUnder this government\u2019s watch, Britain has imported more Russian goods and paid tens of millions to buy Moscow\u2019s planes. The British public will be appalled the UK is continuing to fill Putin\u2019s war chest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photograph by Raid Necati Aslm\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government is trying to establish whether a multi-million-pound purchase of aircraft from Russia broke the UK\u2019s sanctions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,2993,393,4884,178318,1144,332,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-558828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-defence","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-mod","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115518391233411523","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}