As of: February 13, 2024, 4:00 p.m
By: Sandra Kathe
Comments
Press
Split
According to Russia's secret service, dozens of aviation authority aircraft "disappeared" from the start of the war until June 2023.
But there are doubts.
Moscow - With the aim of investigating alleged inconsistencies surrounding the disappearance of aircraft and helicopters, the Russian domestic secret service FSB has apparently examined the premises of the Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya.
In addition to civil aviation in Russia, the authority also looks after state-owned civil aircraft and helicopters and is now the focus of having “illegally removed” dozens of machines.
This is reported by the military portal
Defense Express
.
Accordingly, the FSB accuses possible saboteurs of having taken 59 aircraft from state inventory between March 2022 and June 2023 and selling at least 36 of them abroad.
At least eight of them went to “unfriendly states”.
In addition, it is alleged that several machines that were illegally decommissioned and taken abroad are also in use for Ukraine.
The Soviet-era Mi-8 helicopters have long been in use on both sides of the Ukraine war.
(Symbolic photo) © Genya Savilov/AFP
Doubts about FSB report: False accusations of sabotage are possible
As an example, according to the report, the FSB cites that at least three Mi-8 transport helicopters and several Il-76 cargo jets were observed flying with their transponders deactivated.
From this it could be concluded that “information about the flight route should be hidden”.
The specialist portal concludes that the FSB has no evidence for its claims.
According to
Defense Express,
there are even some reasons to doubt the intelligence claims and instead assume the possibility that the FSB could pursue political goals with such claims.
Similar situations already existed during the Soviet era, when false accusations of sabotage were repeatedly used for related political goals.
Soldier fled by helicopter: How FSB investigations should help Russia in the Ukraine war
Another reason to doubt the FSB report, military experts argue, is that it would generally be difficult to get a civilian helicopter over the border with Ukraine unnoticed.
In the few cases in which machines ended up in Ukraine's hands as a result of acts of sabotage during the Ukrainian war, they were mostly military machines that pilots had voluntarily given over to the enemy.
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Last summer, for example, the case of a Russian soldier became known who, in a long-planned operation, first brought his family to safety and then landed his Mi-8 helicopter on the Ukrainian side of the war zone.
The FSB took the incident as an opportunity to step up its investigations against suspected traitors and saboteurs.
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saka
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