US military transport plane lands in Moscow as Kremlin claims ignorance

A US Air Force cargo plane landed in Moscow on August 25, completing a direct flight from Latvia that neither government seemed eager to discuss publicly. The Kremlin’s official position: we don’t know anything about it. What we know about the flight The aircraft was a Boeing C-17A Globemaster III, one of the workhorses of US military logistics. It carried the tail number 07-7181 and flew under the callsign REACH 4555. Flight-tracking data shows the plane departed Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington, DC, on August 23 and flew to Riga, Latvia. It sat there for roughly two days before making the short hop to Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on the morning of August 25. The C-17 departed Riga at approximately 8:50 a.m. Moscow time and touched down at Vnukovo at around 10:04 a.m. Unverified footage circulated on social media showing the plane on approach. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia had “no information” about the flight and that no meetings with US officials were scheduled that week. Reports later confirmed that CIA Director John Ratcliffe was aboard. The Moscow trip marked his first known visit to Russia in that role. The diplomatic backdrop This was ...