The flight path thought to be of the plane Russian President Vladimir Putin took for a rare trip abroad to two Arab states on Wednesday suggests it avoided flying over several current and former war zones that Russia has created in recent years.
According to radar data, RA-96024—a Russian Special Flight Squadron plane operated by Rossiya Airlines and known for transporting top officials—departed Moscow just before 8:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, turning immediately southeast before dropping off of radar to the east of Tula, located roughly 200 miles from the Ukrainian border.
When radar returned, at around 1:20 a.m. ET on Wednesday, it was near Grozny, the captal of Chechnya, to the north of Russia's border with Georgia, but arced to avoid the nation by a distance of over a hundred miles. Patchy radar data then suggests it flew over friendly Iran instead of traveling over Syria, before landing in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, shortly after 1 p.m. local time (4 a.m. ET).
Putin traveled to the UAE as part of a "working visit" to it and neighboring Saudi Arabia, the Kremlin announced earlier in the day. It said a meeting with Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE, would "focus on the current state of multifaceted bilateral cooperation" as well as the situation in the Middle East.
The same plane has since left Abu Dhabi for Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, suggesting further that it is being used to carry the Russian president.
Newsweek approached the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment on Wednesday.
The plane's radar signal went entirely offline while traveling to the west of Ukraine, so its exact flight path during the middle stretch of the trip is unclear—but both before and after it went dark, it was several hundred miles away from the border.
Ukraine began using U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles in October, which have a range of 190 miles, while its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, last month expressed a desire to assassinate Putin if given the opportunity, claiming several Russian attempts had been made against his life.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine under the pretense of protecting Russian speakers in the breakaway Donbas region, it staged a similar offensive on Georgia in 2008 in support of two separatist regions.
Though the war only lasted five days, an estimated 850 people were killed and a further 192,000 people were displaced, while all parties were accused of committing war crimes against civilians. In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia maintains "direct control" over the separatist regions.
Russia launched a military intervention in Syria in 2015, in support of the nation's ruler, Bashar al-Assad, who has been embroiled in a civil war against several militias seeking to overthrow his regime.
The war is ongoing, as is Russia's involvement, and Putin's forces, among others involved in the conflict, have been accused of war crimes.
The Kremlin said Putin is due to speak with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, with talks focusing on "bilateral cooperation and trade," as well as "the regional and international agenda."
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
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