The Ukrainian government plans to lease airplanes to bring home passengers who cannot fly from foreign airports due to the situation with the Kyiv-based AeroSvit Airline, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has said.

"We will find the funding and will order relevant services to lease planes, and will provide an organized transfer of our passengers for this critical period," he said at a meeting with economic experts in Kyiv on Thursday.

The prime minister said that he held another meeting that addressed the situation around AeroSvit airline on Thursday.

Azarov said that the government had discussed the possibility of ordering relevant services to engage free aircraft in transporting people.

"We have no such aircraft. There is a company servicing top officials, but its fleet is not large enough to transport so many passengers," he said adding that the condition of the planes didn't allow taking large number of passengers aboard.

As reported, AeroSvit Airline cancelled a number of arriving and departing flights on January 10, 2013. The airline cancelled departing flights for Odesa, Simferopol, Minsk, Stockholm, Donetsk, Beijing, Warsaw, Tashkent, and Tel Aviv. Arriving flights from Odesa, Tel Aviv, Minsk, Donetsk, and two flights from Simferopol have also been cancelled by the airline.

Earlier, AeroSvit said that it intended to return to service those of its planes that were groundlessly detained in some foreign airports.