Russia on Monday announced that it has banned flights by airlines from 36 countries including the UK and Germany, Moscow’s aviation authority said on Monday. 

The move, announced Monday by the state aviation agency, follows a decision by the EU and Canada over the weekend to close their skies to the Russian planes in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

It added that planes from those countries could only enter Russia’s airspace with special permission.

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Russia’s civil aviation authority said it was bringing in the restrictions “as a retaliatory measure for the ban by European states on flights by civil aviation operated by Russian airlines or registered in Russia”.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday said the European Union would shut down its airspace for planes owned, registered or controlled by Russians, “including the private jets of oligarchs.”

Canada’s transport minister, Omar Alghabra, said his nation was closing its airspace to all Russian planes to hold the country accountable for an unprovoked attack on its neighbor.

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Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo tweeted that European skies are “open for those who connect people, not for those who seek to brutally aggress.”

“There is no room in Dutch airspace for a regime that applies unnecessary and brutal violence,” Mark Harbers, the Netherlands’ minister of infrastructure and waterworks, said on Twitter.

A handful of European nations including Spain, Greece and Turkey had resisted closing their airspace before von der Leyen’s announcement.

Robert Mann, an aviation consultant in New York, said the moves by the European Union and Canada would put added pressure on the U.S. to also bar Russian flights.

“It is difficult to understand why we are last to move, both operationally and financially,” he said.

Transport Canada later said that an Aeroflot flight violated the prohibition and that it would “not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action and other measures to prevent future violations.” The department said Canadian officials “mistakenly permitted a banned aircraft into Canadian airspace. This shouldn’t have happened. “

As more airlines canceled flights in and out of Russia, and more countries blocked Russian airlines, the U.S. embassy in Moscow said Americans there “should consider departing Russia immediately via commercial options still available.”

On Sunday afternoon U.S. time, a Moscow-New York flight by Russian national carrier Aeroflot turned back after passing over Norway, according to flight-tracking services. The plane had been routed to fly over Canada. Other Aeroflot flights took circuitous routes after European countries began closing their airspace.