Russia diverts $712m to aircraft buyer from rainy-day fund

Russia’s finance ministry said on Thursday it had allocated another 70.5b roubles ($712m) from its rainy day fund to a company buying aircraft from foreign lessors, a step that could lead to more deals involving stranded planes. Before last year’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia was a major market for aircraft lessors, which bought jets from Boeing and Airbus and leased them to Russian airlines. Western sanctions then forced lessors to cancel hundreds of leases and Moscow refused to allow the planes to leave. Ireland-based AerCap, the world’s largest aircraft lessor, said last month that it had received $645m from Russian state-owned insurance company NSK in a full settlement of insurance claims in relation to 17 aircraft and five spare engines leased to Russian state-controlled airline Aeroflot and its subsidiary Rossiya. The planes became the property of NSK after the insurance claim was settled, a landmark agreement in a dispute over 400 Western planes stranded in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. The finance ministry said it had diverted money from its National Wealth Fund (NWF) to NSK subsidiary NLK-Finance, set up by Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency Rosaviatsiya. “In September 2023...NWF funds in the amount of 70.5b roubles were placed in bonds of NLK-Finance,” the finance ministry said. The total amount of NWF funds placed in NLK-Finance bonds is now 167.5b roubles, the ministry said, without saying why it was allocating the NWF funds to NLK-Finance.<br/>