How travel is being impacted by the Ukraine invasion

Ukraine's airspace is currently closed in the wake of the Russian invasion.

Ukraine's neighbor Moldova has also closed its airspace, as has part of Belarus. Meanwhile the US government's Federal Aviation Administration has told US pilots to avoid "the entire country of Ukraine, the entire country of Belarus and a western portion of Russia."

The UK has banned civilian Russian aircraft from its airspace. In response, Russia has banned British aircraft from its airspace.

Some commercial airlines, including Lufthansa and Air France, had already suspended flights to Ukraine earlier this week as tensions escalated.

Countries including the United States and the United Kingdom have advised their citizens to leave Ukraine.

The US government issued a travel advisory on February 12 warning against travel to Ukraine "due to the increased threats of Russian military action" as well as ongoing concerns about Covid-19.

The UK government also advises against all travel to Ukraine, explaining that "it is likely that commercial routes out of Ukraine will be severely disrupted and roads across Ukraine could be closed."

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency, known as EASA, has warned of a "high risk" to civilian aircraft flying near the Ukrainian border.

Here's what we know about how travel in Eastern Europe and Russia might be impacted in the wake of the conflict.

Can I still fly to Eastern Europe? 

 

Air traffic is still moving outside of severely affected areas. As well as bordering Russia, Ukraine also neighbors Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, as the map above illustrates.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said "operators should exercise extreme caution" and avoid using the airspace within 100 nautical miles of the Russia-Ukraine border.

Moldova has closed its airspace, while Belarus has banned flights over part of the country.

All countries bordering Ukraine were already on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Level 4 list of highest-risk Covid-19 destinations for travel. The US government also warns against traveling to Belarus and Moldova due to the conflict.

Florida-based travel adviser Gwen Kozlowski, a specialist in travel to central Europe and president of travel agency Exeter International, told CNN Travel on February 24 that her agency has had questions from travelers with upcoming trips to Poland, but no cancellations so far.

"We have guests traveling at the end of March and into April in Poland, but that's over a month out. It's impossible to say now how this will evolve. We're basically in wait-and-see mode," Kozlowski said via email.

My flight is supposed to be flying over Ukrainian airspace. Will it be rerouted?

This image from aircraft tracker ADS-B Exchange taken at 11:15am ET on February 24 shows empty airspace over Ukraine and its border with Russia.

 

If you are flying on a route that would usually cross currently blocked-off airspace, the airline will reroute the flight.

Imagery from February 24 from aircraft tracker ADS-B Exchange showed empty airspace over Ukraine and its Russian border.

"For aviation, safety is always the top priority," said Willie Walsh, the director general of the International Air Transport Association airline industry body, in a statement provided to CNN Travel on February 24.

"IATA is helping to facilitate the relevant and timely sharing of information with airlines from government and non-government sources to support airlines as they plan their operations around airspace closures in Ukraine and parts of Russia."

Can I still travel to Russia?

Russian airspace on the border with Ukraine is closed to civilian flights. There are also some restrictions on domestic flights within Russia.

The UK has banned civilian Russian aircraft from its airspace and above its territorial sea from February 24 until May 23. Russian airline Aeroflot usually operates direct flights between Moscow and London-Heathrow and Gatwick, according to its website.

In response, on February 25 Russia's Federal Agency for Air Transport, Rosaviatsia, imposed a ban on UK registered flights, as well as aircraft owned, leased or operated by a person associated with the UK, from transiting through Russian airspace.

The US State Department issued a Level 4: Do Not Travel advisory for Russia in January citing "ongoing tension along the border with Ukraine, the potential for harassment against US citizens, the embassy's limited ability to assist US citizens in Russia," as well as Covid-19 and other factors.

The United Kingdom's advice to its citizens as of February 24 was more specific, advising against all but essential travel to certain Russian regions on the Ukraine border. The UK government also details information on increased restrictions and disruptions to domestic Russian flights, as well as warnings of escalated police presence and ID checks.

Canadian citizens are advised to avoid travel to regions of Russia on the border with Ukraine.

"The bulk of our Russia travelers seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach right now, but, of course, this might change based on how events unfold," travel agent Kozlowski told CNN Travel via email on February 24.

Meanwhile, popular travel author Rick Steves, who organizes tours to Europe, announced Thursday he is canceling tours in Russia for the remainder of the year due to the invasion of Ukraine.

"Our mission at (Rick Steves' Europe) is to help Americans understand the world through travel," Steves Tweeted. "But when we bring travelers to Russia, we also bring their dollars -- dollars that would support Putin's aggression. We have now canceled all 2022 tours to Russia."

How long will travel be affected?

The situation in Ukraine is fast-moving. It is unclear how long airspace over Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus or Russia will be impacted.

According to the UK government's travel advisory, restrictions on domestic flights in Russia are currently set to be in place through March 2.

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Olympians travel to these rugged places to train. So can you

After watching so many impressive Olympic performances, you may be inspired to ratchet up your fitness routine or sports practice. You may even wish you could try an Olympic-caliber workout to see what it's like.

While there are several Olympic training centers in the United States reserved for elite athletes, that's not where most Olympic hopefuls train. Most simply work out in the region where they live, sometimes traveling to a training camp or special locale once or twice a year, said Todd Buckingham, a world champion triathlete and exercise physiologist at Michigan's Mary Free Bed Sports Rehabilitation Performance Lab.

"This is usually to train with other elite athletes and create the optimal training environment without any outside distractions," he said.

These camps and special spots are often in mountainous areas where athletes can train at elevation, or where a particular sport is especially popular. Here are four places where Olympians often gather -- and where you can work out, too.

Important note: Before beginning any new exercise program, consult your doctor. Stop immediately if you experience pain.

Soldier Hollow, Midway, Utah

Soldier Hollow Nordic Center (shown above) is tucked into the Wasatch Mountains and was the site of the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics for biathlon and cross-country skiing. While many elites train here, its 16 miles of trail (26 kilometers) are open to everyone. Five-time Olympian Kikkan Randall said it's one of her favorite places to ski.

"While Soldier Hollow has Olympic-caliber trails, they've done a good job making them accessible for beginners all the way up to elites," she said.

Challenge you can try: Randall's "one-third" workout. Select one of the easy trails, then warm up for 15 or 20 minutes. Next, elevate your pace for another 15 or 20 minutes before cooling down for the same length of time. "You should be breathing a little hard in the middle, but not feeling any heaviness in your muscles," she said.

Manitou Incline, Manitou Springs, Colorado

The Manitou Incline is a 2,744-step outdoor staircase that pitches nearly 2,000 vertical feet (600 meters) in just under 1 mile (1.6 kilometers). Some sections feature a whopping 68% grade. Initially a cable car track used to ferry pipeline materials to Pikes Peak. It morphed into a cable car tourist attraction and then, in 2013, into a unique hiking trail.

The Manitou Incline, in Manitou Springs, Colorado, gains almost 2,000 feet of elevation over less than 1 mile.

 

Some 70,000 people tackle the Incline annually, including scores of athletes from the US Olympic Training Center and US Air Force Academy in nearby Colorado Springs. While it takes the average person an hour or more to reach the top, many elite athletes can summit in less than 30 minutes. The current speed record is a blistering 17:45, set In 2015 by runner Joseph Gray just a few weeks after he competed in the World Mountain Running Championships.

Challenge you can try: Hiking to the top without stopping. If that's too difficult, rest as often as needed. You can also get off at the Bailout, a false summit 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) up the incline. The Bailout connects with the Barr Trail, an easy path leading back down the mountain. Stopping at the Bailout also allows you to avoid the steepest portion of the trail.

Mt. Lemmon Highway, Tucson, Arizona

Cyclists looking for a challenge love biking up the Mt. Lemmon Highway, from its base in Tucson at some 2,550 feet (777 meters) of elevation to its peak in Summerhaven at 8,200 feet (2,500 meters). While the average grade is only 4.2%, it's a nearly 30-mile (48-kilometer) trek. 

The scenic Mt. Lemmon Highway near Tucson, Arizona, offers a challenging trek for cyclists.

 

Pro road-racing cyclists and the US Army West Point Triathlon Team have been spotted training on Mt. Lemmon. It's tradition among many riders who summit to celebrate their accomplishment at the Mt. Lemmon Cookie Cabin, where the favored indulgence is the Ice Cream Cookie: a plate-size cookie topped with four scoops of ice cream, a towering mound of whipped cream and as many toppings as you can handle.

Challenge you can try: Cycling to the summit. Start at the intersection of Tanque Verde Road and Catalina Highway and bike slowly but steadily to Summerhaven. If that's too much, there are rest stops at miles 5.5, 12, 14 and 21 where you can take a break or turn around.

Forest Park, Portland, Oregon

Forest Park in Portland, Oregon, has more than 80 miles of trail that wind around the Tualatin Mountains.

 

Many elite runners live and train in the Portland area, which is also home to Nike World Headquarters. And one of their go-to spots to run is Forest Park, said Andrew Schupp, owner of Schupp Chiropractic & Sports Injuries in Madison, Wisconsin. Schupp, a former collegiate runner at Michigan State University, regularly spotted Olympians there while attending chiropractic school in Portland.

The 5,200-acre (2.1-squre-meter) park features more than 80 miles (129 kilometers) of trail that wind around the Tualatin Mountains. Its two main paths, Wildwood Trail and Leif Erikson Drive, feature distance markers every quarter mile. The trails at Forest Park are generally rolling, although there are plenty of taxing climbs, Schupp said.

Challenge you can try: Intervals on a hilly stretch. After warming up, Schupp suggested running hard for one minute, then easy for one minute; then hard for two minutes and easy for one; then hard for three minutes and easy for two; then reversing back down. If you want more of a challenge, he said to try some hill repeats on Firelane 1. "Firelane 1 is a massive hill," Schupp said, "so it's a tough workout."

Once you've tried an Olympic-caliber workout, it's important to do what Olympians do next: Get plenty of rest. Obtaining adequate rest is something many regular athletes ignore, said Dr. Rand McClain, an osteopath and chief medical officer at LCR Health, a regenerative and sports medicine facility in Santa Monica, California.

"Without rest (and good nutrition), all the training in the world will not result in gains in fitness," he said. "And, in fact, it could result in overtraining and reduced fitness."

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Trump sides with Putin as Biden tries to stop a war

 

It took only 24 hours for Donald Trump to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin's dismembering of independent, democratic, sovereign Ukraine as an act of "genius."

The former President often accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own giddy rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump's self-serving standards.

As President Joe Biden reprises the fabled presidential role of leading the free world, the predecessor who wants to succeed him is showing Putin that impunity, dictator-coddling and hero worship will return if he wins back the White House. Trump's remarks on a conservative radio show on Tuesday will not only find a warm welcome in the Kremlin. They also will concern allies standing alongside the US against Russia who fear for NATO's future if Trump returns.

Trump also sent an unmistakable message to Republicans, who are already playing into Putin's hands by branding the current President as weak, that siding with a US foe is the way into the ex-President's affections ahead of this year's midterm primaries.

Trump didn't take long to make sure Putin knew he approved of his movement of troops into parts of eastern Ukraine, knowing that his comments would be picked up and beamed around the world.

"I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful," Trump said in an interview on "The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show."

The ex-President added: "So Putin is now saying, 'It's independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force," Trump said. "We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. ... Here's a guy who's very savvy. ... I know him very well. Very, very well."

Trump was referring to Putin's declaration on Monday that he would regard two rebel regions of eastern Ukraine, where he has been fostering separatism, as independent and his order for Russian troops, which Putin misleadingly called "peacekeeping" forces, to reinforce the enclaves. The move was a flagrant violation of international law, was resonant of the tyrannical territorial aggrandizement of the 1930s that led to World War II and was, as Biden said on Tuesday, tantamount to "the beginning of a Russian invasion."

In effect, the ex-President is trying to undermine US foreign policy as the current President tries to stop a war that could kill thousands of people and threaten the post-Cold War peace.

But it's unsurprising Trump would praise anything Putin does, given his genuflecting to the Russian leader while in office. Given that he tried to stage a coup that would have destroyed US democracy, it's hardly shocking either that he's not fretting at the loss of Ukrainian freedom. Trump once stood side by side with Putin at a Helsinki summit and trashed US intelligence agencies that said Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election to help him. And Trump tainted Ukrainian democracy himself, seeking to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into his then-Democratic rival, Biden -- an abuse of power that earned him the first of his historic two impeachments.

More than the average Trump controversy

In the hierarchy of vital news stories on Tuesday, the ex-President's boastful ramblings pale in significance to the alarming events in Eastern Europe. But his comments amounted to more than the normal carnival barking and prioritizing of personal obsessions over national interests for which Trump is known.

No other living former president would dream of, let alone get away with, lionizing a Russian leader who may soon be waging the biggest war in Europe since World War II after declaring on Monday that Ukraine has no right to exist.

But Trump's status as the likely favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024 -- and the possibility that he could return to power -- takes his latest crowing over Putin's gangsterism to a new level. He's sending the promise of future favors and approval of Putin's illegal land seizures, which suggest he would do little to reverse them as president.

Trump's latest idolization of Putin is likely to widen the growing divide in the GOP between traditional hawks, who have sometimes praised Biden for standing up to the Russian leader, and pro-Trump lawmakers -- and conservative media stars like Tucker Carlson -- who have sided with Putin.

Trump's former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, a possible future Republican presidential candidate, also recently praised Putin, a scourge of democracy, as a "very talented" and gifted statesman. "He was a KGB agent for goodness sakes. He knows how to use power. We should respect that," Pompeo told Fox in January.

The fact that this is coming from leading members of the party of ex-President Ronald Reagan, who beseeched then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" in divided Berlin and was credited with winning the Cold War, represents a startling transformation. And it shows how far the GOP has traveled away from its respect for fundamental US democratic values in the pursuit of power.

Some Republicans have been more subtle in their criticism of Biden. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has backed the President's effort to unite Western allies behind the US in order to confront Putin and is in favor of strong sanctions to punish the Russian leader. But not for the first time on Tuesday, the Kentucky Republican demonstrated that he was ready to play the game at both ends -- accusing Biden of causing the crisis through weakness.

"I don't believe Vladimir Putin would have a couple of hundred thousand troops on the border with Ukraine had we not precipitously withdrawn from Afghanistan last August," McConnell said in Lexington on Tuesday. "The impression we have left, first with the abandonment of Afghanistan, is that America is not interested in playing as large a leadership role as we used to."

McConnell is tapping into a sentiment shared by many Americans of both parties that the US evacuation from Afghanistan last year was chaotic and poorly planned and hurt perceptions of Biden's leadership abroad. At the same time, however, Biden's leadership in this crisis has been more assured. He has, for instance, brought NATO members closer than they have been in many years.

The idea that Biden is weak in the face of Putin is sure to play out on the midterm campaign trail all year. But the fact that Republicans are laying such a charge following their complicity in Trump's obsequious attitude toward Putin is hypocritical and absurd. The House Republican leadership, which is in Trump's pocket, accused Biden of "appeasement" on Tuesday -- the same day that their de facto leader described Putin as a "genius."

Trump's repeated fawning over Putin

While the last administration often laid out a firm stance against Russia, it was repeatedly undermined by Trump's gushing admiration for Putin in public and his habit of making impulsive decisions that played into Russia's foreign policy goals, including the US withdrawal from northern Syria.

Trump lauded Putin in the interview Tuesday as a "tough cookie" who loves his country and he insisted that he had stopped Putin from invading Ukraine on his watch.

"I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, 'You can't do it. You're not going to do it.' But I could see that he wanted it," the former President said. In reality, Trump suggested during his 2016 campaign that Russia could keep Crimea, another Ukrainian territory which Putin had annexed in 2014. "The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were," Trump said, parroting a Kremlin talking point.

The idea that Trump's toughness prevented Putin from invading Ukraine is undermined not only by his chummy exchanges with a leader who imprisoned opponents and presides over a country where journalists are often killed.

One of the goals of Putin's pressure on Ukraine -- as he has made repeatedly clear -- is to drive NATO back to its boundaries at the end of the Cold War and to divide the Western alliance. With Trump in power, the Russian leader didn't need to bother with the latter goal, since his counterpart in the White House frequently berated trans-Atlantic allies and cozied up to US enemies.

And it's not as if Putin let up on America when Trump was in power. Cyberattacks emanating from Russian soil also took place throughout the Trump presidency, including the SolarWinds operation that breached US federal agencies. Supposed respect for the US didn't stop Russian agents from using a biological weapon on British soil to poison a defector, according to the UK government.

There are multiple documented instances of Trump being soft on Putin. And GOP criticisms of Biden as failing to stand up to Putin conveniently forget Trump's notorious Helsinki news conference, not to mention the multiple strange contacts between his 2016 campaign team and Russian outsiders.

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