Antifake
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) recently released a statement about its latest outstanding “success”:
“The Federal Security Service has uncovered and thwarted an operation by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and its British supervisors to steal a Russian MiG-31 high-altitude supersonic fighter jet, which carries the hypersonic Kinzhal air-launched missile, and take it abroad.
In order to hijack the aircraft, Ukrainian military intelligence officers attempted to recruit Russian pilots, promising to pay them $3 million. The special services then planned to send the aircraft with the ‘Kinzhal’ missile to the area where NATO's largest airbase in southeastern Europe is located, in Constanța, Romania, where it could be shot down by air defense systems.
The measures taken have thwarted the plans of the Ukrainian and British intelligence services to organize a large-scale provocation.”
Russian state-controlled news agency TASS expanded on the story, adding multiple details:
“When approaching the commander of the aircraft, intelligence used the so-called journalistic organization Bellingcat, controlled by the British CIS [see below], which had already come to our attention...
Ukrainian military intelligence planned to kill the commander of the Russian MiG-31 aircraft, which they planned to hijack, by applying a poisonous substance to his oxygen mask. This was reported by an operative of the Russian Federal Security Service.
‘Intelligence was in a hurry and began to insist that the navigator hijack the plane on his own after neutralizing the commander in flight. To plan the neutralization of the aircraft commander, intelligence officers questioned the navigator in detail about the layout of the MiG-31 cockpit, the oxygen supply system for the pilot, and the use of an oxygen mask during flight, with the intention of applying a special compound to it,’ he said.
According to him, poisoning as a method of neutralizing the crew members of Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft that the HUR attempted to hijack had been used before and ‘became a kind of calling card for Ukrainian military intelligence and its curators.’
At the same time, arguments that the MiG-31 navigator was unable to land due to the design features of the aircraft were not taken into account. ‘Then we first thought about whether intelligence needed the aircraft as such. Soon, data was received confirming the conclusions that the true goal of Ukrainian and British intelligence was a provocation, which consisted of directing a Russian MiG-31 with a Kinzhal missile on board into the airspace of one of the European NATO countries and its destruction by the bloc's air defense forces,’ said an FSB employee.
According to Kyiv’s plan, everything was supposed to happen on Romanian territory, in the area of the city of Constanta. ‘The HUR only had to convince the navigator to disable the aircraft commander during the flight and follow the direction indicated by intelligence,’ said the FSB official.
He stressed that in the current international situation, it is clear that this could have led to unpredictable negative consequences.”
Notably, the above was contradicted by Yury Knutov, director of Russia’s Air Defense Forces Museum and a regular guest on Kremlin-controlled state television. Knutov spoke with the pro-Kremlin weekly Argumenty i Fakty, saying:
«If the theft of the MiG-31 with the hypersonic Kinzhal missile had been successful, Western countries could have obtained information about the missile's guidance systems and the materials from which it is made, and would have taken a significant step forward in developing their own hypersonic weapons… If the “Kinzhal” had fallen into enemy hands intact, it would have caused enormous damage to our country…
Soviet aircraft have been stolen in the past. In 1953, a MiG-15 was stolen from North Korea to South Korea, MiG-21s were stolen from Iraq to Israel, and a MiG-23 was stolen from Syria to Iraq. Our most famous case is the hijacking of a MiG-25 from the USSR to Japan. All of the aircraft were intact because they are primarily interesting as examples of technology. So no one would shoot down a MiG-31. It is likely that instead, the pilots could be used for media provocations against Russia.”
Major General Vladimir Popov, an expert at the propaganda publication Vzglyad (who for some reason was modestly introduced as a “military pilot”), notes that the operation Knutov is talking about is impossible:
“The most amusing aspect of this is the proposal to organize online courses for navigators on piloting and landing fighter jets. Apparently, the individuals involved were incredibly desperate and incompetent. Our specialist, on the other hand, was clearly toying with them like a cat with a mouse. Pilot training is an extremely complex, expensive, and responsible process. Navigators are trained in a slightly different direction. Moreover, in the MiG-31 in particular, it is very, very difficult to control the aircraft from the second cockpit.”
This means that the version of events purporting that the alleged hijacking attempt was intended to capture samples of Russia’s latest weapons is contradicted by Russia’s own military experts. That leaves the second version — a supposed provocation aimed at forcing NATO air defenses to shoot down the plane in order to create a pretext for a strike on Russia. In that scenario, the MiG-31 navigator-turned-“hijacker” would effectively play the role of a suicide pilot. The absurdity of this version is obvious: it is impossible to imagine what could motivate him to take part in such a scheme. It is fanciful to imagine that a navigator who is physically unable to land a MiG-31 aircraft might be persuaded by his Western “curators” that he is capable of doing so, and a dead man has no use for $3 million in cash that could not even plausibly be transferred to his surviving relatives.
Still, the cherry on top of this unbelievable story comes from a detail reported by the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda:
“Recruitment of the crew began in 2024. After an unsuccessful attempt to recruit the pilot, a ‘journalist’ from Bellingcat, Sergey Lugovskikh, turned to the navigator. A man named Alexander offered him $3 million and guaranteed foreign citizenship. As an example of a previous ‘success,’ the recruiters sent a photo of the defector Maxim Kuzminov, who hijacked a Mi-8 helicopter in 2023 and was later killed in Spain.”
Indeed, what could be more inspiring for a would-be defector than a reminder that the previous one ended up being “riddled with bullet holes” in a parking garage in a Spanish resort town?
The Insider’s lead investigator Christo Grozev called the FSB story completely implausible, as the supposed “recruiters” used an AI-generated face and an unnatural, synthetic voice. Why would “British intelligence” or the HUR disguise themselves as a non-existent journalist from an “undesirable” organization no Russian pilot would ever talk to? Why would they show a photo of a murdered defector as an incentive? In Grozev’s view, the entire narrative is so clumsy that it does not merit serious comment.
Screenshot of a Nov. 11 TASS piece titled “FSB: Bellingcat used in Kyiv's operation to hijack a MiG-31 with a Kinzhal” mentioning the “British CIS.”
As for the “British CIS” mentioned by TASS, a government initiative of that name does exist: the UK Government’s Construction and Industry Scheme, a framework for deducting tax from certain construction payments directly at source. Notably, when used in the context of Russia, the acronym “CIS” does indeed refer to the “Commonwealth of Independent States,” a rough post-Soviet analogue to the British Commonwealth. It appears the author of the Russian fake confused these entities while inventing the “details” of the supposed Western plot.