On September 1, 2026, the plane was initially spotted near Narva, close to the border with Estonia. Its last publicly available location was recorded near Liepaja (at the border with Latvia), after which it stopped transmitting location data accessible to civilian systems.
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By September 3, RA-82040 made a return flight. Monitoring systems then recorded it near Medovo in the Kaliningrad region. From there, the “Ruslan” headed towards Saint Petersburg, and upon entering Russian airspace, data transmission ceased.
The plane had already been used for military transports
RA-82040 had previously carried out military transport missions. In March 2022, it was reported that Russia used the An-124 to transport Iskander missile operational tactical complexes from Russian territory to the Machulishchy airfield in Belarus.
Among the planes conducting such transports at that time was RA-82040. Along with it, planes RA-82014 and RA-82038 were also used to transport missiles.
Currently, the plane is included in the US sanctions list. On May 19, 2023, it was added to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control SDN sanctions list under the “RUSSIA-EO14024” program.
The sanctions entry directly associates RA-82040 with Russia’s 224th Flight Squadron, writes “Unian”.
The same “Ruslan” plane had also drawn observers’ attention in September 2025. After a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow on September 23, Russian Telegram channels released a video showing a large transport plane flying unusually low over the city.
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The “Agentstvo” portal determined that the video featured the An-124-100 RA-82040. That evening, the plane took off from Vnukovo Airport and climbed to about 4.2 km altitude.
How many “Ruslan” planes does Russia have
Russia has a limited fleet of An-124-100s. According to open sources, the Russian Aerospace Forces have about 13 such planes. Most of them belong to military transport aviation.
The main military An-124 operator remains the 224th Flight Squadron. Its planes are stationed or regularly fly from the Seshcha airfield in the Bryansk region. The 566th Military Transport Aviation Regiment, operating An-124s, is also based there.
The 224th Flight Squadron carries out transport tasks on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Defense, transporting oversized and extremely heavy cargo.
On the other hand, the fact that a plane is listed in military registers does not necessarily mean it is actively used. Some An-124 planes are kept in storage or require maintenance.
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