Russia has sent Vietnam a proposal to wet-lease aircraft with crews and maintenance, Transport Minister Andrei Nikitin said, as the country seeks capacity for routes where passenger traffic has surged. “We sent relevant proposals to our colleagues, they are considering them,” Nikitin said.
Nikitin said passenger traffic between Russia and Vietnam had nearly tripled compared with last year.
A wet lease supplies an aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance. For Vietnam, the proposal carries a particular risk: its main airline operates only Airbus and Boeing aircraft, and sending Western-made jets to Russia could expose Vietnamese carriers to US secondary sanctions.
The request is the latest consequence of sanctions imposed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Those measures cut Russian airlines off from spare parts, authorised maintenance and direct contact with Airbus and Boeing, severely disrupting a fleet reliant on foreign components.
Moscow responded by allowing airlines to re-register in Russia more than 400 leased Western aircraft rather than return them to their owners. International aviation law prohibits dual registration of a single aircraft, while the International Civil Aviation Organization has no mechanism to force Russia to return the planes.
From 2023 to 2025, Russian regulators grounded over 480 aircraft, nearly half of the country’s commercial fleet, citing technical defects and falsified maintenance records.
Russia has looked beyond its own carriers for a way to add aircraft. President Vladimir Putin signed a law in April 2025 allowing Russian airlines to wet-lease planes from foreign carriers. Previously, such arrangements were limited to Russian airlines and domestic flights.
Aeroflot had already made the first wet-leasing deal at the end of 2024, taking three wide-body Airbus A330s, with crews, from the Russian carrier iFly. It later leased a fourth Airbus A330 from iFly.
No further wet-leasing agreements between Russian carriers, or involving foreign carriers, have been reported. Russia has nevertheless approached countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East with similar proposals, and Ethiopia rejected one.
Sergei Alexandrovsky leads Aeroflot, which has leased the four A330 aircraft from iFly. Andrej Napolnow, Aeroflot Group’s head of investor relations, said the group planned to keep operating Western aircraft, including Boeing 737s and Airbus A320/A321s, beyond 2030 and had “enormous resources” for those aircraft types in inventory.
The Vietnamese proposal therefore puts Russia’s search for flying capacity alongside the sanctions exposure of any foreign carrier that supplies it.
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