Fighter Jets Now Escort Putin's Plane on Russia Travels: Report

Two Sukhoi Su-30SM from the Russian Knights aerobatic team perform during the Dubai Airshow on November 12, 2017, in the United Arab Emirates. Russian fighter jets now escort President Vladimir Putin on his travels within the country, according to an independent Russian investigative site.

Russian fighter jets now escort President Vladimir Putin on his travels within his own country, according to an independent Russian investigative site.

The Russian leader was escorted to Yakutsk, a port city and the capital of Sakha in east Siberia by at least one Sukhoi Su-30SM multi-role fighter jet on Tuesday, independent Russian publication Agentstvo reported.

It marks the first visually confirmed case since the beginning of the war in Ukraine of Putin traveling to Russian regions escorted by military aircraft, the news outlet reported, noting that fighter jets had previously only accompanied the president on trips overseas.

The development comes at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the West amid his ongoing war in Ukraine. Many of Ukraine's NATO allies have granted Kyiv permission to use weapons they have supplied to strike targets on Russian soil.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Defense Ministry for comment by email.

Agentstvo said Yakutsk residents published several videos and photos of the fighter jet accompanying Putin's presidential plane. The publication cited Russian military analyst Ian Matveev who said the footage shows an Su-30SM. The aircraft was developed by JSC Sukhoi Design Bureau for the Russian Air Force, and had its maiden flight in 2012.

The publication said it analyzed the feeds of state-run news agencies and Telegram channels and found no indication that Putin has been escorted by fighter jets during his travels within Russia during the war before Tuesday.

In December, the Kremlin said Putin's Ilyushin-96 aircraft was escorted on his rare trip abroad to the Middle East by four Russian Sukhoi-35S fighter jets for security reasons.

"The region is turbulent, and if the UAE and Saudi Arabia are stable, safe countries, then the environment, the adjacent region, is certainly full of danger and unpredictability," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at the time.

Putin has decried decisions by numerous NATO member states to allow Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia. He has warned that he could arm the West's adversaries with long-range missiles.

"If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don't we have the right to supply weapons of the same class to regions of the world where there will be strikes on sensitive facilities of those countries?" Putin told reporters on June 6.

"That is, the response can be asymmetric. We will think about it," he added.

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