Russian army transports "military aid" from China almost every day

Ukrainian military portal Defense Express reported this on November 27, 2022.

"Flight tracking services record regular flights of heavy transport aircraft An-124 of Ruslan type, manufactured by the Russian company Volga-Dnepr, to China. Russian aircraft do not always turn on the transponder, which makes it difficult to track them. In total, about 10 flights took place over the last week," the report states.

Such activity was also noticed in China itself, where local spotters posted a video of the Russian company's An-124 Ruslan landing at Zhengzhou airport. At the same time, the comments to the video explain that the plane arrived to pick up "military aid - equipment, bulletproof vests, helmets, clothes, etc."

Also, flight tracking services, in particular Radarbox, record 9 An-124 Ruslan flights to China and only 3 back to Russia over the past 7 days, which "straightforwardly indicates that the transponder was turned off during some of the flights," Defense Express claims.

"Aircraft with tail numbers RA-82074, RA-82044, RA-82081 are involved in the transportation," Defence Express claim.

The standard flight runs along the route Moscow-Novosibirsk-Zhengzhou-Novosibirsk-Moscow. The final destination of one of the flights was Urumqi.

Zhengzhou is a powerful logistics and industrial center, as well as a powerful industrial high-tech zone, which includes units of Chinese defense giant Norinco.

Urumqi is also the production site for a number of industrial giants.

"Such regular flights, especially with An-124 Ruslan aircraft with transponders turned off, as well as posts on Chinese social media lead to the conclusion that Russia is delivering military cargo by aircraft. Moreover, this is the kind of military cargo that is urgently needed and Moscow cannot wait until it will be delivered by rail," Defense Express emphasizes.

Also, "the discovered flights are definitely not all that the Russian Federation has made to China with a similar purpose."

"These are only those that were recorded by the flight monitoring services of civilian aircraft. We can only guess about the activity of the military transport aviation of the Russian Federation on similar routes," concludes Defense Express.

To be updated.