Russia’s Emergencies Ministry’s evacuation plane just made a quick stop in Syria

August 28, 2013 Syria, Troubled Areas

David Cenciotti

Russia is evacuating nationals from Syria in anticipation of a U.S. strike on Damascus’s Chemical Weapons arsenal.

An Il-62 registered RA-86570 and belonging to the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations made a very quick visit to Syria overnight.

The aircraft, using the callsign SUM9715 was first spotted around 21.11 GMT at FL370 as it overflew Moldova heading toward the Mediterranean Sea, avoiding Turkish airspace.

The aircraft entered the Syrian airspace east of Aleppo where its ADS-B transponder and landed at Lattakia around 00.05 GMT on Aug. 28.

The aircraft made a quick stop to unload some aids and after boarding some Russian and CIS nationals “who had earlier expressed their determination to return to Moscow,” took off again at 02.00 GMT as SUM9716.

Both flights could be tracked on Flightradar24.com.

Image taken on FR24.com website

About David Cenciotti

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

CharleyA says:

August 28, 2013 at 3:15 PM

By US attack, of course you meant a coalition attack – it’s pretty clear that the US is not going to make a unilateral strike.
Nikita Sergeyevich says:

September 3, 2013 at 9:07 AM

The cowardice of Vladimir Putin is shameful! In the autumn of 1956 the british-french-zionist coalition actually invaded and occupied Egypt to remove President Nasser, re-colonialize the Suez canal and prevent the building of a huge dam on the Nile river. Meanwhile the CIA created a fake revolution in Hungary to distract the soviets.

Yet, soviet leader Khruschev took off his shoe in the UN and beat it against the bench and said the USSR will drop H-bombs on Paris and London, unless the imperialist forces leave Egypt immediately.

That happened, Nasser returned to power and the huge hydro-electric dam of Assuan was built. Over time, Egypt became a stong nation that even the NY-Tel-Aviv axis of vengeance could not ignore. On the other hand, France was so humiliated being abandoned by USA that they left the NATO military branch for 35 years. Britain became relegated to the position of a “dog on chain” of USA.

Russia, the heir of USSR, still has almost infinite many H-bombs and Putin could also take off his shoe in the UN to send a powerful STOP message to the wolves that want to tear apart the secular Syria. I think Russia could also invade Cyprus with 40k paratroopers to block the imperialist preparations and recover the funds confiscated from russian citizen deposit holders in the recent fake cyprian state bankruptcy. (The USSR had promised 40k paratroopers to help the arab side in the 1973 war, but they never made good on that promise…)

Yet, Putin is not Mr. K! He is a very petty person who is not worthy to lead Russia.