The prospect of Russian President Vladimir Putin dying in a fiery plane crash came up Tuesday when the Kremlin was asked if it had any concerns about aircraft safety in the wake of two world leaders plummeting from the sky in recent weeks.
The vice president of Malawi was confirmed dead Tuesday in the latest plane crash, just a couple weeks after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed when his helicopter went down.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured that Putin uses “domestic aircraft,” which he claimed are “very reliable” and “subject to special maintenance.” In fact, he said, all Russian aircraft are maintained in accordance with “strict standards” that ensure safety.
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“There are regulatory agencies, so the system works here,” he said.
His assurances, strangely, came just a few hours after the Russian Defense Ministry announced that a military jet had gone down in the mountains of North Ossetia and killed all crew members on board after a “technical malfunction.”
The International Civil Aviation Organization, part of the United Nations, deemed Russia one of the four most dangerous countries to fly in after at least 180 aviation accidents there last year, twice as many as in 2022, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported. The country had a poor flight safety record even before Western sanctions left airlines deprived of spare parts for foreign-made planes.
Data from the Aviation Safety Network shows more plane crash fatalities in Russia over the past two decades than in any other country.
