Putin avoids Polish, Baltic airspace on the way to Hamburg
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plane, on its way to the G20 summit in Hamburg, avoided Poland and the Baltic states’ airspace. Instead of taking a straight route from Moscow, it headed down the Baltic Sea past St. Petersburg and Helsinki.
According to news agency Reuters, this meant a detour of some 500 km. Flight tracking website FlightRadar24.com showed that the plane, an Ilyushin IL-96 with the registry number RA-96022 of Russian state carrier Rossiya’s special flights squadron, avoided a direct route to Hamburg.
Instead it flew in international airspace over the Baltic Sea, along Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. It didn’t avoid the airspace of non-NATO states in the area, entering the airspace of both Finland and Sweden on its way.
Kremlin press spokesman Dmitri Peskov refused to comment, only stating that “the president’s security is the most important thing”.
Editor: Dario Cavegn
