Depends where in Russia you leave from, Russia is big.

A great circle from Moscow to Zurich passes through Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic and Germany, however if you went from Volgograd to Zurich you would go straight through eastern Ukraine.

I don't think there is currently any commercial carrier that sends its planes over Eastern Ukraine. Not any commercial carrier that wishes to remain in business.

Right now, according to Flightradar24, there are airliners from Dniproavia, Metrojet, Yamal Airlines and Air Moldova flying across eastern Ukraine. They are mostly going across the north of East Ukraine apart from Dniproavia, which may yet swing north, but it isn't as though airlines are avoiding the whole of eastern Ukraine.

The 'contested' area is completely free from planes right now.

Ok, if by Russia, you mean Moscow and by eastern Ukraine, you mean south-eastern Ukraine, apart from Crimea, then you are right.

Apart from M99551 from Motor Sich Airlines, which is headed to Kharkiv.

edit - actually it looks as though it is going past Kharkiv as it is still climbing.

I thought that Snowden was in Moscow, I could definitely be wrong about that. And yes, 'eastern Ukraine': the contested area.

That word 'conceivable'. I do not think it means what you think it means. Or eastern Ukraine for that matter. That is normally anywhere east of the Dnieper river.

Either you missed out on the last couple of months news coverage somehow or you are deliberately being obtuse in order to score 'points'. Not sure which.

Anyway, these days when people are talking about the Eastern Ukraine in terms of an area that you should not be flying planes over they are not quibbling over facts of geography but in relation to the ongoing attempt at secession in the Eastern part of the Ukraine. If you wish to have it specified by google map coordinates, lists of cities, an animated map of the moving frontier then I could probably comply with the demand but it isn't worth the trouble.

Currently 'don't fly your civilian aircraft over Eastern Ukraine' is something that you could take either as person informed about current events or as a cartographer.

By your standards we don't have a 'middle America', there is no 'eastern Cyprus' and so on.

It's contested territory at best right now, quite possibly at some point in the future it won't be called Ukraine at all.

Look, there are still commercial carriers flying across the Karkiv oblast. Karkiv is where the mayor was shot in the back by a sniper and people are currently using grenade launchers in town. It is contested.

By my standards, eastern Cyprus is the eastern parts of Cyprus and middle America is the people in America who share a conservative rural culture, though where they live is almost incidental, much like middle England.

And I have been reading the news, however I do not rely on it if looking for actual facts about where commercial carriers are flying.

This is because journalists are generally really lazy and unreliable for anything other than a broad brush view of things, a view which you are now regurgitating unprocessed.