Ukraine when introducing sanctions against Russian airlines does not put up the "iron curtain" between two countries, Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarsky.

"The purpose of the sanctions is punishment of breakers of law and increase of economic pressure on the nuclear state that committed the act of aggression against Ukraine. The sanctions against Russia were introduced by other countries – the U.S., EU, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and others. Global society supports us. As other countries, Ukraine is ready to face economic loss from the decision," he said at a briefing in Kyiv last week.

The minister said that first the sanction pressure would be tangible for Russian airlines, as in H1 2015 passenger flow between the two countries totaled around 657,000, and Russian airlines carried 2.5 times more passengers than Ukrainian airlines.

"The large part of this passenger flow is transit. Ukrainian passengers will be able to use transit opportunities of the existing hubs and this loss for them would not be tangible," Pyvovarsky said.

He said that the measures taken by Ukraine are foreseen in the intergovernmental agreement on air communications between Ukraine and Russia.

"We have proofs of violation in documents and this is the ground for revoking permits for flights. This is important for understanding of Ukrainian citizens and expert society. Ukrainian sanctions are response to violation of the requirements of the intergovernmental agreement by Russian airlines," he said.

He said that the ground for imposing of retaliatory sanctions by Russia today is unclear.