A U.S. military transport plane has unexpectedly landed in Moscow, sparking speculation about what the aircraft was carrying and why it was sent to Russia.
Flight tracking service Flightradar24 shows that a Boeing C-17A Globemaster III, a U.S. military transport aircraft, arrived at Vnukovo International Airport on Tuesday morning.
The flight originated at the U.S. Air Force facility in Camp Springs, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., where Andrews Air Force Base is located. It stopped at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina before flying to Riga, the capital of Latvia, on Sunday. The plane then continued its journey and landed in Russia’s capital around 10 a.m. Moscow time (2 a.m. ET) on Tuesday.
Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter for CBS News, said that CIA Director John Ratcliffe was on the flight and was traveling to Moscow for unspecified meetings.
A spokesperson for the Pentagon told the Daily Beast that they have “nothing to offer” regarding the U.S. military plane landing in Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added to NBC News that he had no information about the aircraft.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, posted a video on X showing what appeared to be a motorcade with American diplomatic license plates driving through the streets of Moscow after the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III landed at Vnukovo Airport.
According to The i Paper, the appearance of the military aircraft in Moscow also sparked speculation that it could be involved in a possible prisoner swap. A U.S. plane reportedly arrived in Russia in February as part of a swap deal involving Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher who had spent three years detained in a Russian prison on drug charges.
Vnukovo International Airport, one of Russia’s busiest airports, has frequently been used as a travel hub for diplomatic and military flights during the war between Russia and Ukraine.
The last direct flight by a U.S.-registered jet to Russia from Europe occurred in January, when President Donald Trump’s special envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner flew to Moscow for peace talks with Vladimir Putin regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has entered its fifth year, Reuters reported.
Witkoff and Kushner were scheduled to arrive in Moscow for further peace talks, but the meeting was postponed and is unlikely to take place before the end of the month, Russian news agency TASS reported Sunday.
The U.S. Air Force describes the C-17 Globemaster III as its “most flexible cargo aircraft.” It transports troops and conducts tactical airlift and airdrop missions, as well as carrying tens of thousands of pounds of cargo.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Kremlin and the CIA for comment.
