Cairo, Russian specialists continue to intensively cooperate with Egyptians during security checks at airports in the Egyptian resorts of Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada, but the restoration of air traffic depends on the situation with terrorism on the Sinai Peninsula, Russian Ambassador to Egypt Georgy Borisenko said in an interview with the TEN television channel. The diplomat recalled that air traffic with Egyptian resorts was suspended after the crash of the Kogalymavia aircraft in October 2015. “This happened two months after the start of the Russian military operation in Syria, and the Russian security services quickly established that it was a terrorist act that was committed in retaliation for the fact that we began to fight terrorist organizations in Syria. The operation in Syria is not over yet, so all the dangers and risks remain,” Borisenko said. “We hope that these [charter] flights will be restored within some foreseeable time, although again everything depends on the situation with terrorism,” the ambassador said. He said that in connection with the improvement of the situation with the coronavirus in Egypt, it was possible to restore direct flights between Moscow and Cairo. Borisenko said that in previous years, Egypt had been visited by more than 3 million Russian tourists. The largest disaster in the history of Russian and Soviet aviation occurred on October 31, 2015: the Kogalymavia Airbus A321 airliner flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg crashed over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. There were 217 passengers and seven crew members on board, all of whom were killed. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) later said the incident was a terrorist attack. Direct flights between the countries were suspended in the fall of 2015 and resumed only in April 2018 after security measures were radically increased at Egyptian airports at Russia’s request.