As of: February 14, 2024, 5:15 a.m
By: Jens Kiffmeier
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59 aircraft have disappeared from Russia's state inventory.
The FSB is investigating, but experts doubt the secret service's claims.
Moscow – The Russian domestic secret service FSB has apparently carried out investigations in the offices of the Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya.
This happened as part of an investigation into alleged discrepancies surrounding the disappearances of planes and helicopters.
Rosaviatsiya, which looks after both civil aviation in Russia and state-owned civil aircraft and helicopters, is suspected of having “illegally removed” dozens of aircraft.
This emerges from a report by the military portal
Defense Express
.
The FSB accuses potential saboteurs of stealing a total of 59 aircraft from state ownership between March 2022 and June 2023 and selling at least 36 of them abroad.
According to the FSB, eight of these went to “unfriendly states”.
It is also alleged that several machines that were illegally decommissioned and taken abroad are also being used in Ukraine.
Mi-8 helicopters are in use in the Ukraine war on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides.
(Symbolic photo) © Ihor Tkachov/AFP
Russian secret service FSB suspects the use of Russian machines in Ukraine
According to the report, the FSB recorded that at least three Mi-8 transport helicopters and several Il-76 cargo jets were spotted with deactivated transponders.
This would indicate that “information about the flight route was being obscured.”
The specialist portal concludes that the FSB cannot provide any evidence for its claims.
According to Defense Express,
there are even some reasons to question the intelligence agency's statements and instead consider the possibility that the FSB could be pursuing political goals with such claims.
Similar situations had already occurred during the Soviet Union, when false accusations of sabotage were repeatedly used for political purposes.
Ukraine War: Military experts doubt FSB sabotage allegations
Another reason military experts cite for their doubts about the FSB report is that it would generally be difficult to get a civilian helicopter over the border with Ukraine unnoticed.
In the rare cases in which machines ended up in Ukrainian hands as a result of acts of sabotage in the Ukrainian War, they were usually military machines that were voluntarily handed over by the pilots.
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An example of this is the case of a Russian soldier that came to light last summer.
In a long-planned operation, he first brought his family to safety and then landed his Mi-8 helicopter on the Ukrainian side of the war zone.
This incident prompted the FSB to intensify its investigations against suspected traitors and saboteurs.
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saka
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Our author Sandra Kathe wrote this article and then used an AI language model for optimization at her own discretion. All information has been carefully checked. Find out more about our AI principles here.