On the night of Sunday, May 25, information spread on social media that a russian Tupolev Tu-160 supersonic strategic heavy bomber (NATO reporting name: Blackjack) was allegedly shot down or damaged over the territory of the russian federation. The shooting down of such an aircraft, especially due to so-called "friendly fire", could have been a truly extraordinary event, but later footage of this episode appeared on the network, which refutes previous reports.
Thus, a video later appeared on social networks, showing russian anti-aircraft gunners firing at a plane somewhere over the city of Tver - its silhouette could not be identified as a Tu-160 bomber.
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Тим часом в Твері криворукі ППОшники не змогли влучити по Ту-134/154 pic.twitter.com/CMKW3rUOBA— MilitaryAviationInUa (@MilAviaUA) May 25, 2025
It is worth noting that at the same time as the plane was spotted over the city, local channels were reporting on a drone attack actively publishing footage of drones flying over and downing them. Given this, it can be assumed that the russian military probably decided not to figure out what kind of strange "drone" was flying over their heads and tried to shoot down the plane (or there could have been a drone somewhere nearby in the sky). Judging by the released video, the plane was able to avoid "friendly fire" and was not hit.
At the same time, attention is drawn to the fact that in russian social networks, with reference to the Flightradar 24 data, information about the departure from Moscow of about 10 aircraft belonging to the russian Ministry of Defense was actively published. Independent OSINT researchers estimated that there were even more than ten of these aircraft.
Over the last few hours, roughly a dozen military transport aircraft with the Russian Air Force have departed Moscow heading east towards the Ural Mountains, including several An-148s, Tu-154s, Tu-134s, Tu-214s, Il-62Ms and Il-76MDs. Almost all of these aircraft are used for the… pic.twitter.com/3Xac3sYAtM— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 25, 2025
Given this, we can conclude that the aircraft shown in the video above, which came under “friendly fire” from russian anti-aircraft guns near the city of Tver, could be one of the Tu-134/Tu-154 aircraft of the russian Aerospace Forces. In particular, the Evergreen Intel Twitter account identified this aircraft as Tu-134AK RA-65996, which belongs to the so-called russian Aerospace Forces. Apparently, this aircraft took off from the Migalovo military airfield, located on the outskirts of the city of Tver.
This is a Tu-134. Pic for comparison. https://t.co/z8jdSLBnuC pic.twitter.com/r6GOxbu9vV— Evergreen Intel (@vcdgf555) May 25, 2025
This is not the first time that russian air defenses have fired on their own aircraft during attacks by Ukrainian long-range kamikaze drones on military facilities in the russian federation. For example, in November 2024, russians fired on an An-2 aircraft that they mistook for a Ukrainian drone.
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