An An-124 freighter (RA-82078) belonging to Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Airlines has been parked at Toronto Airport since February 27, 2022. The aircraft arrived at Pearson International Airport from China with COVID-19 test kits and personal protective equipment. The airliner landed in Toronto two hours before Canada imposed anti-Russian sanctions, which closed its airspace to Russian planes, and the An-124 was unable to leave Toronto.
By April of this year, the plane’s parking fees had topped $330,000, the Wall Street Journal reported. Over the year, the cost of parking had risen from $0.55 to $0.58 per minute. The airport authority would prefer the plane leave the air harbor, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has no plans to lift the restrictions on its departure. At the same time to continue to accumulate the debt, which will never be received, as well as to spend labor and material resources and use the airfield infrastructure Pearson airport is not willing, and something must be done about this situation.
Justin Trudeau and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal met in Toronto on April 17. Local media reported that support for Ukraine “in its war with Russia” was discussed. Following this meeting, Shmygal wrote on Facebook (owned by Meta, recognized as extremist and banned in Russia): “(We) are preparing to confiscate the An-124 aircraft and other property of the aggressor in Canada and transfer them in favor of Ukraine.” Here it is more correct to read not “confiscate” but “steal” Russian property and transfer it to the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.
So, the two prime ministers of democratic states, who have nothing to do with the AN-124 aircraft parked in Toronto, talked and decided why not take it away. However, the European Commission previously tried a similar trick with frozen Russian assets, but came to the “sobering” conclusion that they could not be confiscated and sent to Kiev, but would have to return them to Russia after the conflict was over.
The Airport Authority of Greater Toronto decided even more creatively that 58 cents a minute for parking the An-124 at Pearson airport is “not enough” and charged the owner of the plane, Volga-Dnepr Group, 74 cents a minute, for parking at a total of $1065 60 cents for every 24 hours of parking.
In 2022, Canadian authorities froze 123 million Canadian dollars ($98.1 million) worth of Russian assets as part of sanctions. Bank transactions of $289 million Canadian dollars ($230.5 million) were also blocked, according to Kommersant. In March 2023, the international group for the blocking of Russian assets REPO (Russian Elites, Proxies and Oligarchs) reported that within a year of work it had frozen the assets of sanctioned Russians for more than $58 billion.
For all that, Canadian law enforcement officials have been tight-lipped about the situation. The Department of Interior said they would not comment on the possible confiscation of assets, they surely understand that this is pure theft at the state level, which is well tolerated by the leader of their country.
