Media: Putin Fears His Plane Can Be Shot Down Even In Russia

The head of the Kremlin has started flying everywhere in a company of fighter jets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has started flying with fighter jets even around Russian regions. Previously, military aircraft accompanied him only on foreign trips, writes the Agency.

Vladimir Putin flew to Yakutsk on Tuesday, June 18. Residents of the city published several videos and photos on social media with a fighter jet accompanying his plane. As military analyst Yan Matveyev told the Agency, the footage shows a Su-30SM.

The Agency analyzed the feeds of state agencies and Telegram channels and found no reports since the beginning of the war about fighter jets accompanying the Russian president's plane during visits to Russian cities. In January 2024, before Putin's visit to Kaliningrad, Dmitry Peskov was asked whether the president would be accompanied by fighter jets, but he avoided answering this question.

The media regularly writes about fighter jets accompanying Putin during international missions. This was the case during his flights to Belarus (December 2022, November 2023 and May 2024), Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan (May).

In December 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry even published footage of Su-35 fighter jets that accompanied Putin's plane during a flight to the UAE. Peskov then explained that this was done for security reasons: “The region is restless, and if the UAE and Saudi Arabia are stable, safe countries, then the surrounding area, the adjacent region, is certainly full of danger and unpredictability.”

Earlier, the media reported that Vladimir Putin began wearing a bulletproof vest at public events.

At the same time, the Kremlin officially states that there is no need to increase security measures for the president. In particular, press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, said in mid-May that security measures remain at the “regular level.”