To listen to President Vladimir V. Putin, the economy of Russia has thrived despite the western sanctions, becoming more self -sufficient and reorieasing towards new markets.
But there is a company that Russian officials do not secretly secret: Boeing.
The air giant planes play a fundamental role in the economy of Russia, connecting its distant cities. Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Boeing sold and maintained planes in Russia and managed an important design center there. He also bought a large part of his titanium, a key material for modern jets, from Russia.
While President Trump pursues a surprising rapprochement with Moscow, the company emerged as a first test if the American companies that fled Russia at the beginning of the war will return.
Boeing did not say anything in public if he is thinking of going back and has refused to comment on this article. But the obstacles are considerable.
So far Trump has held American sanctions on Russian aviation, who gives him the lever with Mr. Putin as he pursues negotiations to end the war. And there is a widespread skepticism in the circles of US aviation on the sense of Boeing’s business that returns to Russia, a reflection of the enormous damage that three years of war have done to the position of the country in the American company world.
“If the choice is given between Russia and drinking bleach,” said Richard Abaulafia, an aerospace consultant, “I am sure that that glass of bleaching seems very good”.
For the most part, the economy of Russia surprised external observers with its ability to resist sanctions and rotate far from the west. Chinese cars have replaced western ones. The factories of Russian trains who worked with the German company Siemens continued the production on their own. A Russian payment system filled the gap left by Visa and Mastercard.
And Mr. Putin sought such a turnaround in aviation: the country’s civil plane, he said in 2023, had to fill the gap left by the manufacturers of western aircraft who retired from Russia. Russia has paid billions in renewing its aeronautical industry of the Soviet era, but experts do not expect to start the mass production of line planes in via Russa before 2030.
The Russian commercial airline fleet is still based on over 450 planes made by Boeing and its European rival, Airbus. Those jets – an anchor of salvation for a nation that covers 11 time fuses – today represent more than half of the passenger planes in use in Russia, according to Cirium, an aeronautical data company.
The European Union, where Airbus is based, remains firmly against any rapprochement with Russia. Airbus also suspended his operations in Russia in 2022, although he still purchases part of his titanium there. A spokesman for the company said he had other sources of the metal and that he always tried to diversify his supply chain to become more resilient.
As they are confused, the Russian carriers have cannibalized some of their fleets for the spare parts and have restored the planes designed by Falena. The main private airline of the country, S7, has put its new Jet Airbus on the ground because they could not serve their engines, which come from Pratt & Whitney, an American company. Aeroflot, the flagship carrier, turned to Iran to serve its wide planes.
After more than three years of sanctions, the situation seems more and more precarious. The repairs were performed without the supervision of the aircraft producers and at least some components have been marked in the country.
Andrei V. Kramarenko, who analyzes the Russian aviation at the Moscow Economic School of Economics, said that the airlines have faced a particular challenge in maintaining the long -haul jets. Flights in all stopping from Russia, eight hours of eight -hour countries, could become a memory of the past.
“Everyone is interested in foreign suppliers who return to Russia between two or three years,” said Kramarenko.
As a result, while the general message of the Kremlin is that Russia is going well without the western companies, officials recognize that the Russian aviation is not.
Sergey V. Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, declared on Friday that Russia had asked the Trump administration to raise penalties on Aeroflot as part of a “return to normal” in the United States report.
Anton Alikhanov, the Minister of Commerce, said this month that “it would be important” for the United States to release $ 500 million in parts of reserve plane that said Russia had purchased before the penalties were imposed. Denis Manturov, the first deputy prime minister of Russia, said in February that if Boeing was “ready to return, we are ready to consider it”.
And in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in Nuova Delhi last month, a Russian senior legislator, Vyacheslav Nikonov, volunteered that he would have wanted to see Boeing returning to Russia because the country needs spare parts and because “renewing the aircraft fleet also would be interesting.”
The main American companies such as Honeywell and GE also sell parts of key planes. Neither said he is contemplating a return to Russia.
Even if Boeing had returned, analysts say, the relationship would almost certainly be as deep as before the invasion – an era in which Boeing managed a flight training campus in Moscow and his managers met with Mr. Putin.
Boeing has a lot of business without Russia, which represents a small part of the global market for parts and planes. The company has over 5,500 pending orders for commercial jets and is working hard to collect production beyond a few dozen planes per month.
“There is nothing in industry now that it is limited to the question,” said Abaulafia, aerospace consultant, who is the CEO of the Aerodynamic Consultant company. “The problem is on the offer side. It has been for five years and will be for another five years.”
In addition, Russia has trembled the trust of the global aviation industry seizing hundreds of planes for rent in its fleet after penalties were imposed in 2022. The foreign owners of the planes were forced to record losses of many billion dollars and the validity of the air service registers has been doubted.
“That plane will forever have a stigma against them,” said Quentin Brasie, founder and managing director of Accho Consulting, who offers services including aircraft assessments. “What was done during the period in which they were managed and kept in Russia? Nobody knows.”
However, Russia has some advantages to offer. Before the invasion of 2022, he was the largest titanium supplier for Boeing’s commercial planes. The metal constitutes about 15 percent of the structural weight of the 787 Dreamliner, according to Mr. Abaulafia.
But Boeing has diversified his sources and, say analysts, he has no need for Russian titanium.
Russia seems to be interested in a wider agreement that would raise the sanctions related to the aviation imposed by the United States. Kirill Dmitriev, an economic correspondent for the Kremlin, said after meetings with Washington officials this month that “active works are underway” to restore direct flights between Russia and the United States.
A spokesman for the main American counterpart of Mr. Dmitriev, Steve Witkoff, refused to comment on their interviews, who have not yet delivered a turning point in restoring the US-Russia report, even if Mr. Witkoff arrived on Friday in Russia for another negotiation round. The secretary of state Marco Rubio told journalists after the visit of Mr. Dmitriev who had not “heard anything about direct flights” restored in Russia.
Most likely the restoration of flights would lead the two countries to reopen their airspace on mutual aircraft. This could benefit from the US airlines, which must fly for Russia on many routes in Asia, as well as airlines from Europe, South Korea and Japan who are also prohibited by Russian aerial space.
“It would be a competitive advantage over the European and all other airlines,” said Aleksandr A. Dynkin, president of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations in Moscow.
Dynkin added that the reconstruction of bonds with Boeing would be important given the continuous hard line in Europe against the reconstruction of the ties with Russia.
“There is no one to talk to when it comes to Airbus,” said Dynkin, who recommends the Russian Foreign Ministry. “But we can talk to Boeing.”
Edward Wong Reports contributed by Washington e Michael Crowley from Brussels.