Moscow: A US military transport plane landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport on Tuesday August 25, data from the flight tracking service Flightradar24 showed. Video released on social media showed the plane approaching the airport.
Reuters verified the location from the buildings, the car park and the trees seen in the video, which matched satellite and archive imagery of the area. The date when the video was recorded was verified from flight monitoring data. The aircraft seen in the video was verified as a Boeing C-17A Globemaster III from the engines, the wings and the tail. The aircraft was flying in the direction of Moscow's Vnukovo airport.
The large Boeing Globemaster, with the US-registered tail number 07-7181, had flown direct from Riga, in Latvia, and landed in Moscow at around 7 a.m. GMT.
Reuters was unable to verify whether it carried any cargo or passengers.
The Kremlin said it had no information on the plane.
The aircraft had arrived in Riga on August 23 from the US Camp Springs airbase near Washington DC, data from Flightradar24 showed.
The last direct flight of a US-registered jet to Russia from Europe took place in January this year, carrying special envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner for Ukraine peace talks with Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin said last week that there was no information yet on another visit to Moscow by Kushner and Witkoff, as talks between the U.S. and Russia on Ukraine have largely stalled amid the war in Iran.
