Putin’s plane flew over Finland and the Baltic Sea instead of Poland and the Baltic nations’ air space to its destination, yournewswire.com reported.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24 revealed how the Russian presidential Il-96-300PU en route from Moscow to Hamburg last Thursday deviated to fly over non-NATO states Finland and Sweden before entering Danish and German airspace.
President #Putin's plane avoiding #Baltic airspace on way from #Moscow to #G20Summit in #Hamburg: https://t.co/pa9HiKnk1W pic.twitter.com/PYO4i0G6cE
— VykintasPugačiauskas (@pugaciauskas) July 7, 2017
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the reason for the detour. “I will leave this question without an answer, because all issues related to the president’s movement directly concern his security,” he said.
The route to Germany has led to British tabloids, the Daily Mail and The Sun, speculating that Putin “feared getting shot down”. Last month a Polish F-16 flew dangerously close Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s plane, forcing one of the Su-27s escorting the minister to warn off the intruder.
Meanwhile in Warsaw the media has been speculating wildly that Russia may have been behind the Polish presidential plane crash in Smolensk, Russia in 2010, which resulted in the death of President Lech Kaczynski.
Alexander Khramchikhin, the deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute of Political and Military Analysis, said Polish airspace is currently quite tricky: “The Polish Air Force is the only air force in the world equipped with both American and Russian equipment. Specifically, they have 48 F-16s, about 30 MiG-29s, and about 30 Su-22 fighter-bombers in service, with another 20 in storage. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Poles bought up all the former East German and Czech MiG-29s. Their ground-based air defenses include a battery of US Patriots, as well as Soviet-era S-200 and Krug missile defense systems,” the analyst said.
Russia’s fleet of presidential Il-96-300PUs is believed to consist of four aircraft, fitted with advanced security features, including a protective coating along the frame to confuse radars, a jamming system against MANPADS missiles, and their own air defense system. But it has not been secured against false flag attacks.