Russian plane begins to gather expelled diplomats, but EU sanctions make the road hard

A plane launched by Moscow to bring home Russian-expelled diplomats from Greece and Spain has been forced to take a 15 thousand-mile-long deviation due to the European Union's ban on Russia, according to the Flightrader24 Flight Agency, Sky News, explains Periscope.

The first flight course led the plane to take a long way to Madrid before flying across North Africa and heading north toward Athens.

The announcement of the company monitoring the flights says: “While Spain and Greece made a welcome for the plane to enter their airspace, the flight was brought around other countries that are continuing to stop flights from Russia”.

In February, European Commission President Ursula von der Leeyen had announced a host of measures targeting Vladimir Putin's regime and stopped EU airspace to Russian aircraft.