In the morning of 14 August, an Il-96 aircraft of the Rossiya Special Flight Unit (SFU) flew from Moscow to Alaska. According to the Flightradar24 monitoring resource, the aircraft with the flight number RA-96023 left Vnukovo airport at around 8:00 and will arrive in the US Anchorage in a few hours.
It is in Anchorage (tentatively – at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base) that US and Russian Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet on 15 August, where they intend to discuss the war in Ukraine and the possibilities of ending the conflict. According to the TASS news agency, the departing aircraft may be carrying one of the advance teams preparing for the summit.
The RA-96023 aircraft is often used by Russian officials of various levels. In 2024, this very aircraft was used to rotate Russian and US diplomats, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. It was also frequently used by Nikolai Patrushev when he headed the Security Council.
However, the most talked about board was seven years ago. Back then, almost 400 kilograms of cocaine were seized in the buildings of the Russian embassy in Buenos Aires. After that, the Argentine gendarmerie published photos of the Russian liner on which that shipment of cocaine was to be sent to Russia (at that time the cargo had already been switched).
The photos showed the flight number: RA-96023 – the same Il-96 SLO Rossiya. Shortly after the publication of the Argentine gendarmerie, the Russian Presidential Affairs Directorate said that the aircraft was not involved in the cocaine shipment and that the photos “could have been falsified.”
The summit between the US and Russian leaders is scheduled for 15 August in Anchorage, the largest city in the state of Alaska. It will be the first meeting between a Russian leader and a sitting US president since 2021.
On 11 August, Donald Trump suggested the possibility of “some exchange of territory” between Ukraine and Russia, and expressed dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian leadership’s remarks about the need for constitutional agreement in this case.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Vladimir Putin told Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff that he would agree to a full ceasefire “if Ukraine withdraws troops from the entire Donetsk region.” Subsequently, a knowledgeable source told The Washington Post, it was confirmed that Putin was not ready to give up claims to Russian-held territories in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will not give up its territories to Russia. Neither he nor European leaders were invited to the Alaska summit, but the US administration and President Donald Trump remain in touch with Ukrainian and European leaders.