Vladimir Putin Wants to Fly to Turkey with Fighter Jets. He's Afraid of Being Shot Down

Vladimir Putin was last in Ankara in 2014. He was supposed to visit in February this year, but the visit was canceled without any reason given.

Since July – according to the Kremlin – talks about the trip to Turkeybut they encountered a big problem due to Putin's extraordinary demands, claims Middle East Eye.

According to the sources of this service, the Russian president would like his plane to be escorted by fighters. Probably because he is afraid of death. The Ukrainians could try to shoot down the plane, the portal claims.

The demands of the Kremlin authorities are difficult to meet because in Turkey, which is a member NATOthere are allied air defense systems. They can see the fighters escorting the president's plane Russia as hostile targets, the website claims, followed by Russian-language media. One of Middle East Eye's interlocutors said it was unlikely that Turkey would disable NATO systems to meet Moscow's demands.

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According to former Turkish ambassadors who have previously been involved in diplomatic talks about visits by foreign heads of state, Russia's request is highly unusual. “The Turkish government may send fighter jets to escort foreign leaders as a gesture of goodwill,” one of them said, adding that he could not recall a single such case.

Russian officials are also reportedly complaining about hotels in Ankara, because the three largest ones – Hilton, Sheraton and JW Marriott – are American hotels. Moscow believes that American hotel chains are dangerous to Putin. This problem could be solved by housing the Russian guest in a government residence, but this would be a solution that would be extremely difficult to explain to the Turks themselves, to NATO allies and, even more broadly, to international public opinion.

At the beginning of June, the independent Russian portal Agientstwo wrote that Vladimir Putin began flying in his own country accompanied by a Su-30 fighter. The portal cited, among other things, accounts from residents of Yakutia, which the leader visited on his way to North Korea.

According to the Agency's findings, this was the first confirmed case since the beginning of Russia's armed invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when during a visit to his own country, the plane with Putin on board was escorted by a military plane.

On foreign flights, Putin is often accompanied by fighter jets. In December last year, the Moscow Defense Ministry published a video showing Su-35 fighters during Putin's flight to the United Arab Emirates, recalled the independent Russian-language website The Moscow Times.

“Vladimir Putin's already heightened security measures were significantly tightened after he unleashed the war in Ukraine. In early June, two Russian officials and a source close to the Kremlin told us that, on the orders of intelligence services, he had begun wearing a bulletproof vest at outdoor public events,” The Moscow Times wrote.