Russia's Airports After 2022
Russia's Airports in 2026
According to data from the aviation authority Rosaviatsiya, a total of 108.5 million passengers were carried in 2025. This represents a 2.7% decline compared to 2024, when 111.6 million passengers were carried. After the crisis year of 2022, the market grew in 2023 and 2024, but is now shrinking.
At the same time, traffic patterns are shifting. Domestic traffic fell to 81.2 million passengers in 2025, down from 84.6 million passengers in 2024. The decline of 3.4 million passengers marks a slowdown following three years of growth, which had been driven primarily by government subsidies and the shift from international travel to domestic destinations. International traffic also showed a slight positive trend last year: 27.4 million international passengers were recorded in 2025, up from 27 million the previous year.
This trend reflects the changing geographic structure of Russian air traffic. While traditional European routes have largely disappeared since 2022 due to the military conflict in Ukraine and Western sanctions, international flights to Turkey, the Middle East, Central Asia, and select Asian destinations have stabilized. At the same time, the importance of domestic traffic remained high, accounting for more than 70%.
For 2025, Aeroflot—excluding its subsidiaries—is projected to be the country’s largest airline by a wide margin, with a passenger volume of around 46 million. Far behind is the private carrier S7 Airlines, with 15 to 16 million passengers. In third place is the Aeroflot Group’s low-cost subsidiary, Pobeda, which carries 13 to 14 million passengers. Rossiya Airlines, also part of the state-owned Aeroflot Group, carried 10 to 11 million passengers. With around 9 million passengers, Ural Airlines is among the other major carriers in the Russian market.
Consolidation Instead of Competition: Sheremetyevo Buys Domodedovo
“For years, Domodedovo Airport was a Russian success story,” the New York Times commented on the sale of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. “After its privatization in the 1990s, it developed into Moscow’s second-largest airport. British Airways, Lufthansa, and other international airlines chose Domodedovo as a hub over state-owned competitors, making it the Russian capital’s most important gateway to the world.” In late January 2026, the operator of the competing Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport acquired the airport at auction for approximately 66 billion rubles, equivalent to 730 million euros. The buyer is the Sheremetyevo subsidiary OOO “Perspektiva,” which is owned by the Sheremetyevo operating company.
Domodedovo had already been nationalized by mid-2025, after the former owners, Dmitry Kamenshchik and Valery Kogan, were forced to transfer their asset to the state via expropriation by court order. It marked the end of a two-decade-long struggle over Domodedovo, during which the Russian state or state-affiliated groups had repeatedly attempted to take the airport away from its owners. In 2016, Dmitry Kamentshik was placed under house arrest for months after being accused of inadequate security measures following a 2011 bomb attack that killed 37 people.
The prosecution accused Dmitry Kamentshchik of holding foreign citizenship. Kamentshchik denied this and stated that he had only held a nine-month residence permit for Turkey.
The subsequent sale process took place in two stages: A first auction with only one bidder, who was disqualified due to allegedly flawed documentation, failed in January 2026. The set starting price of 132 billion rubles, equivalent to around 1.5 billion euros, was portrayed in the Russian media as inflated. In fact, an appraisal by a consortium of Western banks regarding the issuance of Eurobonds for Domodedovo more than five years ago had estimated the airport’s value at 5.4 billion euros. Unlike the now-initiated sale process, that appraisal also included the airport’s real estate.
The second auction was conducted as a so-called Dutch auction, in which the minimum bid was gradually lowered. The original starting price of 132 billion rubles, nearly 1.5 billion euros, was ultimately halved.
The American daily newspaper The New York Times writes: “To return to profitability and cover the costs of the new terminal, Domodedovo would need to bring passenger traffic back to pre-war levels, according to analysts. This would require a complete lifting of international sanctions and a resumption of relations with Europe—something that is not expected in the foreseeable future.”
Last year, passenger traffic at Domodedovo fell by 11% compared to the previous year. Compared to 2019, the decline was as high as 35%. Since 2022, the airport had suffered greatly from the loss of European connections, which had previously accounted for a significant portion of its transfer traffic. Additionally, internal problems at the main resident airline, S7 Airlines, weighed on the airport.
The acquisition by Sheremetyevo also shifted the ranking of airport operators in Russia. The ownership group behind Sheremetyevo now controls the country’s largest airport holding company in terms of passenger volume.
The change of ownership at Domodedovo is part of a broader trend toward consolidation in Russian air travel. Competition between individual airports is increasingly giving way to large operator structures that dominate both the capital region and the regions.
At Domodedovo, the change in ownership was accompanied by far-reaching internal restructuring. According to information from the Russian business newspaper Kommersant, airport management began reducing staff as early as the summer of 2025.
According to Kommersant estimates, between the summer of 2025 and early 2026, 200 to 300 employees left the company. In late January 2026, management announced further layoffs, particularly in the airline and partner operations divisions. A total of around 7,000 people work at the Domodedovo Airport terminal. According to insiders familiar with the situation at the airport, the 18 subsidiaries, such as Domodedovo Catering, were also affected by similar offers of “voluntary resignation.” “When I didn’t go along with it, I stopped getting paid,” said one affected employee.
At the same time, the number of international airlines flying to Domodedovo Airport is shrinking. According to Kommersant, the Bahraini airline Gulf Air plans to move its flights from Domodedovo to Sheremetyevo in the spring. With the departure of Bahrain’s Gulf Air, seven foreign airlines remain at Domodedovo: Emirates and Air Arabia from the United Arab Emirates, the Israeli airline El Al, EgyptAir, Royal Jordanian, Jazeera Airlines from Kuwait, and Ethiopian Airlines. Before the pandemic, around 20 international airlines served the airport, including British Airways and Lufthansa, which ceased operations in 2022.
Capital City Airports Compared
According to an analysis by the Russian monthly magazine “Expert,” Sheremetyevo was once again Russia’s largest airport in 2025 with 43.13 million passengers. Compared to 2024, however, this represented a slight decline of 1.3%.
St. Petersburg-Pulkovo Airport followed in second place with 20.7 million passengers. Here, too, a slight decline was recorded (−0.6%). Pulkovo thus remained the most important airport outside of Moscow.
Third in the ranking was Moscow-Vnukovo Airport, which, with 16.4 million passengers, was the only major Moscow airport to grow, by +2.5%. Domodedovo followed in fourth place with 13.86 million passengers and the sharpest decline among the top 10 (−11.0%).
Regional hubs: Novosibirsk, Sochi, Kazan
In 2025, the largest regional airports recorded significant growth in some cases, while certain tourism-oriented locations saw a decline compared to 2024. In the ranking of the ten busiest airports by passenger volume, Novosibirsk-Tolmachevo Airport ranks sixth with 9.68 million passengers and recorded a 4% increase over the previous year. In 2023, the airport received a new terminal, funded by the state-owned Sberbank. Novosibirsk is considered a central transfer point for Western Siberia and the region’s most important hub, as it is home to the headquarters of Russia’s largest private airline, S7.
Yekaterinburg-Koltsovo Airport also performed well, handling more than 8.3 million passengers in 2025, a 4% increase from the previous year. 5.8 million passengers traveled on domestic flights, which was roughly on par with the previous year, while 2.6 million travelers used international flights, an increase of 16%. Yekaterinburg-Koltsovo thus benefits from its role as a hub in the Ural region and from the growing importance of international destinations, which have shifted more strongly toward non-European markets since 2022.
Kazan Airport showed stable performance. Passenger volume for 2025 is projected at around 5.38 million, a figure nearly on par with the previous year. As the capital of Tatarstan, Kazan aims to further expand its infrastructure to strengthen its role as a central air transport hub in the Volga region: According to the Russian Ministry of Transport, a fourth passenger terminal is scheduled to open in 2026.
In contrast, Sochi Airport recorded a decline in 2025. Passenger volume stood at 12.5 million, a drop of 8.8%. International demand reached 1.8 million passengers, a record high, while total passenger volume nevertheless declined. Russian industry analyses attribute the decline primarily to a redistribution within the Southern Corridor: In 2025, airports that had not handled any flights since 2022 partially resumed operations, including Krasnodar in September and Gelendzhik in July. This created alternatives for tourist and private travel that had inevitably gone through Sochi in previous years.
Nine new constructions in over 30 years
Despite investments in new terminal buildings, the complete construction of new airports in Russia remained the exception. Terminal 2 at Domodedovo, which opened in 2023, was the largest new terminal construction since the collapse of the Soviet Union. An overview by the state news agency TASS concludes that since 1991, nine airports nationwide have been built “from the ground up,” three of them in the past five years. New construction projects are capital-intensive and involve lengthy planning and approval processes. Accordingly, new airports often serve to replace outdated infrastructure rather than to build additional capacity in regions that are already well-served.
A prominent example is Saratov-Gagarin Airport, which opened in 2019. The new airport is located near the village of Saburovka, about 20 kilometers north of Saratov, and replaced the inner-city Saratov-Centralny Airport, which was not designed to handle larger modern aircraft.
A second, equally characteristic project is the new airport in the Siberian city of Tobolsk. On September 24, 2021, the new airport was opened there, named after the historian and cartographer Semyon Remesov. Here, too, the focus was on restoring or fundamentally renovating infrastructure: the former airport had been closed in the 1990s. Additional new airports have been built on the Kamchatka Peninsula and in Novy Urengoy in northern Siberia.
The airport near Rostov-on-Don, which began operations in 2017, is described in a TASS background report as the first major international air traffic hub to be built “from the ground up” in Russia since 1991. An analysis by the business newspaper RBC highlights its status as a new construction project “with a complete aerodrome infrastructure,” including a 3.6-kilometer-long runway.
2018 World Cup Modernization Project
Russian airport infrastructure received a significant modernization boost in the run-up to the 2018 FIFA World Cup. In several host cities, new terminals were built or existing ones were extensively expanded. Key World Cup projects included new terminals in Kaliningrad, Volgograd, and Saransk. In Kaliningrad, the new passenger complex at Khrabrovo Airport opened in the spring of 2018 following a long-term renovation; the terminal complex covers approximately 40,000 square meters and was designed to handle about 3.5 million passengers per year at the time of its opening. In Saransk, a new terminal with 7,000 square meters of floor space was built, designed to handle 300 passengers per hour.
The World Cup served not only as an occasion for selective new construction but also as a catalyst for a broader wave of investment in handling infrastructure at large and medium-sized locations. In 2018, for example, the new Terminal B went into operation at Moscow-Sheremetyevo Airport. The total area is 110,500 square meters, with a capacity of up to 20 million passengers per year. During the same period, new terminal capacity was also created at smaller locations.
The World Cup wave was followed by a second phase, during which several major new facilities went into operation in 2019, including in Khabarovsk and the Ural metropolis of Chelyabinsk. A renovated arrivals building was opened in 2019 for the Caucasus tourism hub of Mineralnye Vody.
Modernization did not come to a complete standstill even during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, new terminals opened in Petrozavodsk and Cherepovets. In the region of Karelia, which borders Finland and has Petrozavodsk as its capital, a new terminal building opened its doors in 2020. In 2021, new or significantly expanded passenger terminals followed in Kemerovo and Ufa.
Outlook for 2035: Big Plans, Unresolved Funding
For the coming decade, the Russian government has announced a large-scale program to renew air transport infrastructure. The core focus is the modernization or expansion of 179 airports and airfields by 2035. According to the Russian Ministry of Transport, the plan is to increase the number of airports from 225 to 242. At the same time, the ministry notes that the infrastructure of 131 airports requires construction or reconstruction.
A key financing instrument is the state-initiated “Air Transport Infrastructure Development Fund” (Russian: Фонд развития инфраструктуры воздушного транспорта). According to government data, this fund is intended to finance the renovation of at least 50 airports by 2030.
The programs’ geographic focus is on regions with structural accessibility issues: Siberia, the Far East, and the Arctic. In the logic of state planning, air connections there are considered not merely a transportation option but essential infrastructure, as alternatives via road or rail are either lacking or limited by climatic conditions.
For financing, the government is relying on a mix of budgetary funds, fund mechanisms, and forms of private participation. In the debate, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and concession models are regularly mentioned as essential for realizing projects outside major cities. Investors are ready to participate in concession models for 26 regional airports, while financing structures for other projects would first need to be developed, explained Dmitry Yadrov, head of the Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya, in a conversation with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
This article first appeared in the exclusive newsletter of the German-Russian Chamber of Foreign Trade
