US sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine also affect individual citizens, especially the oligarchs closest to President Putin.
The US Treasury Department, in an official document, mentioned names and surnames. There are at least ten oligarchs who “exploit their proximity to Putin to plunder their state at the expense of their compatriots”.
Based on this lista student created a Twitter account – Russian Oligarch Jets – that monitors the movements of private planes and helicopters of the oligarchs cited. The author of the account is 19 years old, his name is Jack Sweeney and he knows something about private jet tracking: he is the guy who publishes, also on Twitter, the movements of Elon Musk’s plane. The one to which the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX would have offered 5 thousand dollars to stop. And Jack, on the other hand, would have asked for at least 50 thousand.
Sweeney, who says he is interested in Space, Tesla and Aviation, has long been ‘following’ Musk out of curiosity and passion. Different is the case of the account created to monitor the Russian oligarchs, following the statements of the Biden administration: “A transatlantic task force will work to identify, hunt down and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs: their yachts, their homes and all their illegally obtained earnings.”
While the US puts sanctions into practice, the oligarchs keep moving, flying. The White House certainly does not have the help of a college boy, it is clear, but Sweeney plays the part of him by posting on Twitter the details of the private flights carried out by the Russians: in particular the place and time of take-off and landing.
But Sweeney didn’t limit himself to the oligarchs. Soon after he also opened an account- @PutinJet – which he keeps an eye on the movements of Vladimir Putin’s private plane. But the student is keen to clarify that “one should not expect too accurate tracking because there are a dozen Russian aircraft and ADS-B coverage in Russia is not extraordinary”.
ADS-B Exchangefor the uninitiated, it is one of the largest “open and unfiltered” databases of flight data, collected for enthusiasts.