Russian presidential plane lands in Washington

With the airspace of almost all of Europe, Canada and the United States closed to flights from Russia, the Ilyushin IL-96 of State Airlines Russia flew exceptionally from Pulkovo, the main airport in Saint Petersburg to one of the airports. Dulles International Airport in the capital of the United States.

The US State Department has allowed this special trip in accordance with federal regulations so that a number of Russian diplomats can return home after the Joe Biden government declared persona non grata last Monday.

unwanted people

On February 28, Olivia Aller Dalton, a spokeswoman for the US mission to the United Nations, indicated that her country had decided to expel dozens of Russian diplomats for allegedly “participating in espionage activities” that threaten national security.

Dalton, who is part of Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield’s team, noted that the 12 people who were expelled “abused their privileges of residence in the United States” and that work and an investigation had been under way for months to find the truth once and for all. The decision to expel him from American soil.

Russian diplomat fury

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told Reuters that his 12 aides had asked to leave the United States by March 7.

Expressing his strong dissatisfaction with the declaration of persona non grata, he said that this was a “new hostile measure” against the Russian mission to the United Nations, and that he learned of the expulsion thanks to questions from some journalists during a meeting with the media, which is a “flagrant violation” of the host country’s commitment to United nations.

Government fleet plane

To comply with the expulsion order for these 12 diplomats and their families, Moscow sent one of the Ilyushin 96s assigned to the Special Transport Squadron, the Russian Government’s Division of Government Flights and VIP Transport, a group of select aircraft operated by Russian Airlines. , a subsidiary of Aeroflot, a company that today indicated that it will stop traveling abroad due to the current situation as of March 8.

From that day forward, it will only maintain domestic flights and into Belarus, a measure that would be linked to the possible seizure of those aircraft owned by leasing companies when they land at airports in other countries.

13 flying hours

The plane that made this extraordinary flight complied with the European veto and exited to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded the airspace of Finnish sovereignty and then landed towards North America without flying over Norway, Iceland or Canada, to finally enter the United States via the vertical from Boston, passing through western New York and from there it landed In Washington Dulles, an airport honors John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State in the 1950s.

The Russian-made four-engine plane landed shortly after 2:00 pm (8:00 pm in Spain) after a longer than usual flight, about 13 hours, due to restrictions imposed in recent days.

Putin’s planes

The hero of this extraordinary flight is the one with registration number RA-96019, a twin of that flight that took a negotiating team to Brest, Belarus to negotiate with representatives of the Ukrainian government in that city near the border with Poland. The plane in which the expelled diplomats will return has passed through Cuba and Morocco in recent days, landing in Havana, Casablanca and also traveling directly between these two cities on an official flight.

These two IL-96 models are externally practically identical to the devices used by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, although the security measures and configuration of the avionics are different: the four-engine Il-96-300PU, a version that Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin first demonstrated. in 1996.

Official residence by plane

The term PU denotes a checkpoint in Russian, since, as with many presidential aircraft, when the head of state or government is on board, the aircraft is the official headquarters of aviation in all respects.

In 2003, a new aircraft was built, RA-96016, which had already been launched by Vladimir Putin. Seven years later, President Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev ordered two more units, which were combined as the presidential aircraft in 2012 and 2014.

With the return of the current president to the head of state, two more aircraft were added to the fleet, the ones he used on his recent international and national flights. In the second case, Putin also uses VIP helicopters, and although his predecessor always flew the Italian-made AW139, Putin always chose to have his personal helicopter of Russian origin, specifically the Mil Helicopters.