rsoman
There is fifth freedom, there is sixth freedom, and there is Aeroflot LON-MOW-TYO. Believe me, it is a very special case. Because of the necessity for Europe-Japan services to transit large swathes of Russian airspace, they have always had huge leverage over the European and Japanese carriers and this has allowed Aeroflot to do things, under the various bilaterals, that they would not normally be allowed to do under the normal 3rd/4th provisions.
In the beginning, BA and JL operated LON-TYO with a tech stop in MOW and Aeroflot werre allowed to mirror this by operating a through-plane, through flight number service. In that respect, it was a lot more like fifth than sixth freedom.
When the European and Japanese carriers got the technical capability to fly the route nonstop, this obviously put SU at a huge commercial disadvantage. I suspect they could have demanded (and got) full 5th-freedom EUR-JPN nonstop rights in return for overflight clearance but they didn't have an aeroplane capable of doing it. Instead they negotiated very valuable 'royalty' deals with the Europeans who basically pay Aeroflot for the priviledge of not stopping in Moscow, to the tune of some $250 million a year.
Still a darn sight cheaper than going through Anchorage.
So I have to disagree, this is not 'true' sixth freedom. For that, look at KLM or SIA historically, or Emirates right now.