2023-06-24 21:13:39
at Leonard Berberi
In the hours in which the Wagner paramilitary group was advancing towards Moscow, several private jets took off from the capital’s Vnukovo airport to Turkey, Azerbaijan and the Middle East
The military insurrection against the Russian army and the (later stopped) march towards Moscow by the Russian paramilitary group Wagner led to an unusual increase in private jet flights from Moscow to foreign countries, especially Turkey and Azerbaijan. Saturday is traditionally a quiet day for business aviation, with operations at a standstill and the families of billionaires already in their vacation resorts. This, reading the historical trends, also in Russia.
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But from Saturday morning until late afternoon at least fifteen private jets left Vnukovo airport, one of the reference airports of the Russian capital, to head outside the national borders, towards Istanbul, Bodrum, Baku, Tel Aviv and Dubai. This is confirmed by the tracks of specialized platforms, starting with FlightRadar24.
Among these, as several observers have pointed out, is the Bombardier BD-700 Global Express owned by oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, founder of the largest gas pipeline construction company in the country, which then landed in Baku. A Gulfstream G650 also departed from Vnukovo – with destination Istanbul – which is attributed to Vladimir Potanin, another billionaire close to Russian president Vladimir Putin. While an Embraer Legacy 600 has reached Bodrum, southeast Turkey.
Even if observers have spoken on social networks of the escape of the Russian oligarchs, at the moment it is not possible to confirm who was on board: whether the billionaires themselves or only their family members. Return to base may provide an indication of the nature of the journey.
Since Moscow’s army invaded Ukraine, the spaces for movement of the Russians have been restricted: there is a ban on direct flights with Europe and the United States, while South America and Asia are considered insufficiently reliable. For this reason, for sixteen months the oligarchs and their loved ones have been moving on business planes to Turkey, to Israel, to the United Arab Emirates. Or they take advantage of Belgrade to be able to visit Europe by booking scheduled flights: Serbia is the only country on the European continent that still has direct connections with the Federation.
The specialized tracking platforms on Saturday showed no anomalies in the activities of Russian companies and airports. While significant changes were noted in the prices of scheduled flights from Moscow and St. Petersburg abroad for the next two days: on some routes tickets more than doubled in a few hours and this usually occurs as a result of a peak in bookings .
June 24, 2023 (change June 24, 2023 | 21:13)
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