Russian Aviation Updates Abruptly Disappear from Putin Briefings

Russian President Vladimir Putin is no longer receiving aviation updates from Sergei Chemezov, head of Rostec, the country's state-owned defense conglomerate, an investigative site reported on Tuesday.

For the first time since 2020, Chemezov failed to brief the Russian president about developments in the country's civil aviation, Russian publication Agentstvo reported, assessing that Rostec's CEO "avoided having to once again admit to the failure to meet the deadlines for the program to replace Western passenger aircraft with imported ones."

Putin also didn't ask Chemezov for aviation updates, the publication said.

There have been a vast number of cases throughout the war in Ukraine of Russian domestic passenger planes making emergency landings or malfunctioning due to technical issues, driven by a lack of spare parts.

Russian-operated planes have been sanctioned by the U.S. government in response to the war in Ukraine, and aircraft manufacturers have stopped delivering spare parts and new planes to the country.

The U.S. and the EU have also demanded the return of leased aircraft, although the Kremlin has sought to work around this by encouraging carriers to re-register the aircraft in Russia.

This has meant that the planes have continued to fly without receiving crucial software upgrades and mandated maintenance checks required to guarantee their airworthiness, Bloomberg reported in March 2023.

According to Agentstvo, Putin and Chemezov last held an in-person meeting in December, shortly after the Russian leader pledged to produce over 1,000 Russian civilian aircraft by 2030.

"Our fleet of aircraft is very overloaded ... with foreign-made planes," Putin said in December, Reuters reported. "We plan to produce more than 1,000 aircraft by 2030, our own planes. Work is needed."

Shortly after the pledge, 283 billion rubles ($3.1 billion) was allocated to Rostec to manufacture 1,036 planes by 2030.

Data compiled by Newsweek in December found that Russian plane malfunctions had tripled in just one year.

The data showed that from September 2023 to December 8, 2023, Russia had a total of 60 commercial aviation incidents that involved emergency landings, engine fires and malfunctions, along with other technical issues forcing the planes to abandon their intended routes.

There were 15 incidents in September; 25 in October; 12 in November; and eight by December 8, Newsweek found.

Earlier this month, a Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 which was flying without passengers crashed near Moscow, killing three crew members. The passenger jet, which was heading to Moscow's Vnukovo airport from the Lukhovitsy aviation plant, crashed eight minutes after takeoff.

Local media reported that both of the plane's engines may have failed.

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