Kremlin spokeweasel Dmitry Peskov of Tuesday told reporters his boss is perfectly safe flying around on Russian aircraft after two high profile “hard landings” that claimed the lives of Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi and Malawian Vice President Saulos Chilima recently, Insider reports.
“The Russian president uses domestic aircraft. These are very reliable vehicles,” said Peskov, even though they’re kind of not, according to public data showing flight safety incidents have more than doubled over the past year, per the global Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre (JACDEC), who found that Russians experienced 37 cases in 2022 and 81 in 2023. JACDEC founder and CEO Jan-Arwed Richter isn’t even sure his numbers are capturing the full scope given less-than-reliable reporting amid a shortage of parts wrought by international sanctions. “These numbers only reflect cases that became public. There is still a dark figure of unreported incidents,” Richter told the Telegraph in February. It’s not clear if JACDEC counts the “crash” that ended Wagner mercenary company chief Yevgeny Prigozhin since, you know, we had to use scare quotes on it.