Investigation: Russian shadow airlines use Algeria as base for secretive missions

BERLIN/VIENNA — A fleet of Russian military-affiliated cargo aircraft has made over a hundred flights to Algeria over the past year, likely delivering modern fighter jets and equipment to bolster an increasingly important Russian ally at Europe’s southern flank, and using the country as a hub to project Russia’s power deeper into Africa.

A Defense News investigation found at least 167 cargo flights linking Russia to Algeria between March 2025 and April 2026, making the North African country one of the key hubs in Moscow’s global freight network.

Many of the flights connected airfields associated with United Aircraft Corporation, Russia’s state-owned maker of military jets, to Algerian air bases. Several of the cargo flights also roughly coincided with the sighting of new Russian-made warplanes roaring over the Algerian countryside.

The uptick in air traffic comes amid ongoing deliveries of several types of Russian-made warplanes to Algeria. The country is currently receiving Su-57 fifth-generation stealth fighter jets and Su-35 fighters from Russia. It also operates a fleet of about 60 Su-30 multirole fighters and around 40 MiG-29 air-superiority fighters.

At least some of the Russia-Algeria flights are likely linked to the flow of new-generation weaponry. “I think this is a pretty reasonable explanation for these flights,” said Margaux Garcia, a senior analyst with Washington-based C4ADS who tracks Russia’s covert activities.

Algeria has become a key customer for Russian arms at a time when Moscow has seen a slump in its billion-dollar military export business following the invasion of Ukraine.

Algiers bought 73% of its weapons from Russia between 2018 and 2022, and though the share of Russian-origin weapons has declined in recent years, Russia remains Algeria’s top supplier of arms, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country has recently placed several large orders for new aircraft, including the ones manufactured at the very sites the cargo aircraft tracked for this investigation frequently visited.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of harsh Western sanctions as a result, government-affiliated airlines have grown in importance for the Kremlin. In its “Shadow Airlines” investigation, Defense News has tracked about a dozen operators and manually retraced thousands of flight routes, providing a first-of-its-kind comprehensive picture of this unreported underworld. This article is the first in a multi-part series that uncovers this peculiar network of front companies, airlines and Soviet-era freight planes that move Russian weapons and influence around the world.

Defense News tracked Russian cargo flights to the Oum El Bouaghi Air Base, Ain Oussera Air Base, Annaba Air Base, Laghouat Air Base and Béchar in Algeria, among other destinations.

Some flights may also have touched down in other parts of Algeria, but many of the aircraft appeared to be involved in tracking-evasion techniques such as turning off their ADS-B transponders or misdeclaring airports in their itineraries. Particularly flights heading south out of Algiers, the capital and a key hub for the shadow airlines, frequently dropped off ADS-B tracking radars even though other nearby aircraft remained within coverage.

According to an air cargo industry insider, who wished to remain unnamed to speak freely, this is a known evasion technique deliberately employed by pilots. It also matches other clandestine flights that Defense News has tracked.

Aircraft were frequently observed visiting key Russian fighter jet production sites shortly before heading to Algeria. For instance, Algeria-bound aircraft visited Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the sole production site for both the Su-57 and Su-35, at least a dozen times during the period investigated. There were also at least eight flights through Irkutsk Northwest airport, which is central to the Su-30 production line. At least 28 flights relating to Algeria went through Yeltsovka Airport near Novosibirsk, which is the only facility producing and maintaining the Su-34 frontline bomber. Algeria is known to operate or have ordered all of these aircraft and is the first foreign buyer for several of them.

Within Russia, the airport of Mineralnye Vody – a civilian installation with a runway nearly 4,000 meters long – plays a key role in the logistics supply chain on these Algeria flights. About two-thirds of all flights landed here from other Russian destinations before heading onward to Algeria. The airport, located in the North Caucasus, Russia’s far southwestern edge, is a convenient staging location as it minimizes the flight distance between the motherland and destinations in Africa and the Middle East.

The workhorse

The Ilyushin Il-76, the workhorse of these shadow airline operators, typically has a range of around 5,000 kilometers when reasonably loaded. That limits Russia’s power projection abilities without access to intermediary airports for refueling, which are hard to come by given Russia’s current status as a pariah in much of the world.

Data collected by Defense News suggests that Algeria may not only be a destination but also a transit spot for Russian military equipment or support flowing elsewhere into Africa. Between July and September, two Il-76 planes operated by Gelix Airlines, RA-76373 and RA-76360, made eight return flights between Russia and Conakry, Guinea, by way of Algiers.

Guinea, a frequent onward destination from Algeria for the shadow airline fleet, has long been a key Russian-aligned country in West Africa, and ties have deepened further since a military junta took over in a coup in 2021. Russia is deeply involved in the country’s mining sector, especially for bauxite, and the country also serves as a key gateway for Russian weapons deliveries into the Sahel region.

In January 2025, Le Monde documented that two sanctioned Russian cargo ships unloaded over 2,000 tons of military cargo, including light tanks and armored vehicles, at Conakry, from where the convoy then drove north to Mali.

Additionally, Algeria appears to serve as a gateway for Russia into the turbulent country of Niger, where Russian paramilitary forces have been active and the Kremlin has a deep web of interests, not least the country’s vast uranium deposits. An investigation by Italian newspaper Il Foglio from December 2025 showed an airlift operation was underway to move many tons of uranium purchased by state-owned Rosatom from Niger to Russia.

In recent days, a super-heavy Antonov An-124 “Ruslan” aircraft operated by Volga-Dnepr Airlines started flying regular shuttles between Algiers and sub-Saharan Africa, with tracking data suggesting the destination was likely Niamey, the capital of Niger, although the transponder signal is spotty. Satellite imagery reviewed by Defense News shows a large aircraft with dimensions that match those of the An-124 parked at Niamey airport on at least two of the dates in question.

The An-124 is capable of carrying well over 100,000 kg in payload and is the world’s largest operational heavy-lift aircraft.

The aircraft in question, RA-82079, has flown the circuit between Algeria and Niger at least eight times since April 21, and remains in the area at the time of writing. It previously came to Algeria from the Irkutsk Northwest Airport, the assembly site for the Su-30 aircraft, by way of Mineralnye Vody and first landing in Africa at the Oum El Bouaghi air base, where one of Algeria’s Su-30 squadrons is based. From there, it leaped over to Algiers, where it sat for nine days before beginning the shuttle flights to Niger.

Three other An-124 aircraft operated by Volga-Dnepr have visited Algeria in the past year, including on unusual routes flying to military bases deep in the Algerian Sahara desert by way of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Algeria has also served as a stopover for intercontinental flight itineraries.

In March 2025, one of the same aircraft that flew to Guinea – RA-76373 – had stopped in Algeria and its southwesterly neighbor, Mauritania, on an unusual mission to and from Latin America, where it visited Venezuela and Mexico. Similarly, a plane with the tail number RA-78765 used Algiers and Conakry as stops on the way to a multi-hop tour of Latin America that took it through Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba, before returning to Russia by way of Venezuela, Mauritania and Annaba Air Base in northeastern Algeria.

On the route back to Russia, the United Arab Emirates – particularly Dubai, Sharjah and Fujairah – have emerged as common stops, appearing 25 times across multiple operators and aircraft types in the data. On several occasions, aircraft flew directly from Algerian military air bases to Emirati airports before returning to Russia or continuing onward to Central Asia, another key region for Russian sanctions evasion.

The United Arab Emirates itself has been identified in Western government reports and financial investigations as a key sanctions-evasion hub for Russian entities since 2022, offering financial infrastructure, a transshipment hub to obscure supply chains, and airspace access that Russia lacks elsewhere.

‘Air Wagner’

The flight patterns also point to a second type of activity entrusted to the shadow airlines: serving as the logistics arm for Russia’s paramilitary forces abroad, such as the former Wagner Group and current Africa Corps, the group’s successor.

Algiers appears to be a convenient staging ground for West African operations, and one that may be under less scrutiny than some other staging grounds previously used by Russia for supplying its mercenaries on the continent. Planes tracked for this investigation made frequent flights to the Algerian capital with only short stays there, and sometimes, aircraft operating on separate circuits converged in Algiers.

One of these airlines is Aviacon Zitotrans, which has been sanctioned by the United States, Canada and Ukraine. The U.S. Treasury Department, in an explanation accompanying the sanctions listing in 2023, said that “Aviacon Zitotrans has shipped military equipment such as rockets, warheads, and helicopter parts all over the world,” including to “Venezuela, Africa, and other locations.”

Candace Rondeaux, director of public intelligence firm Future Frontlines and the author of an authoritative book on the Wagner Group’s history, said she estimates at least half of the flights by airlines like Gelix and Aviacon Zitotrans are flown on behalf of the Kremlin’s State Property Management Office. That bureau lies outside the structures of the Ministry of Defense and is instead directly subordinate to the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

The Russian government operates two of its own, technically civilian, airlines: the 223rd and 224th Flight Units, which are also frequently used for special-mission air lifts.

According to the 224th Flight Unit’s English-language website, the Office of the President of the Russian Federation is the airline’s main customer. It also lists Rossiya Special Flight Unit, which is responsible primarily for VIP transport, Russia’s state-owned arms dealer Rosoboronexport, and the warplane maker MiG as “other major customers.”

While Russia’s air force and the 224th Flight Unit operate heavy Antonov and Ilyushin cargo aircraft in their own fleets, the use of charter airlines gives the Kremlin more capacity and easier access to civilian aviation procedures than flying government- or military-owned planes abroad, not to mention a layer of obfuscation and plausible deniability.

Analytics firm Dallas Analytics recently published an investigation that included internal Russian government documents and Ministry of Defense air waybills, finding that Russia’s military aviation maintenance backbone is “collapsing due to sanctions and absent spare parts,” with repair facilities effectively insolvent and growing numbers of military aircraft grounded.

“By placing a portion of its fleet on the civil registry and painting them in standard commercial liveries, the Ministry of Defense exploits civil aviation protocols. This allows them to bypass diplomatic red tape and fly into crucial transit nodes like the UAE, Turkey, or various African states under the guise of civilian charter flights,” Dallas Analytics wrote in their report.

The report made public a series of original primary documents that prove the military nature of at least some of the flights, including ones predating the full-scale war in Ukraine. Among them are air waybills that confirm that Aviacon Zitotrans transported Russian military helicopters to Laos in November 2020 under explicit orders from the Russian Ministry of Defense, and a separate set of waybills shows the same airline executing shipments of defense electronics to China on behalf of two of Russia’s leading jet engine manufacturers. Dallas Analytics also published documents regarding the shipment of complete missile systems to India via Aviacon Zitotrans in late 2022.

These various airlines have traditionally served a key logistical function, particularly far from Russia’s shores, and were an integral part of the Wagner Group’s African operations, flying in personnel, weapons and gear, and flying out gold on behalf of the Corp’s former boss, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, said Rondeaux.

While the Wagner Group had its wings clipped after Prigozhin’s ill-fated coup attempt in the summer of 2023, the logistics networks and even many of the mercenary operations in sub-Saharan Africa have remained, if sometimes under new management.

“The media, even intelligence services, have bought this idea that the Wagner brand was dead, and therefore there’s no connectivity,” said Rondeaux.

“Nothing has changed about Russia’s need to circumvent sanctions. In fact, it’s become only more urgent to do so,” she added.

Garcia, the senior C4ADS analyst, said that in places like Mali, approximately 80% of the Africa Corps’ personnel had previously served with the Wagner Group.

Air carriers like those operating in Algeria are key to maintaining these semi-covert missions and serve as wet leasing companies, said Rondeaux. They “provide crews, they provide a flight plan … essentially they manage the logistical arm of what we called Air Wagner.”

Rapid growth

Gelix Airlines has emerged as a key player in recent years, with many flights that raise questions about their purpose on unconventional routes to conflict zones. A combination of hopping around West African locations known to base Russian mercenaries and regular flights back to the Russian mainland should raise eyebrows, said Garcia.

In an email interview with Defense News, Gelix CEO Vadim Baldin disputed the notion that there was no commercial demand on the routes flown by Gelix.

“Guinea, Somalia, Myanmar, Yeltsovka airports, and Irkutsk Northwest Airport − all of these are takeoff and landing points for our aircraft,” Baldin said, adding he was “not able to say anything specific” about the nature of the cargo, other than it was “not military.”

Baldin said Gelix flights “transport cars, machinery, and containers. In short, everything that can be legally loaded onto an Il-76.”

Asked about his company’s flights to United Aircraft Corporation-affiliated airports, he said that “we adhere to purely businesslike relationships with all participants in the air transportation market.”

Speaking to Russian business newspaper Kommersant on April 10, Baldin reported that 2025’s revenue surged more than twofold compared to the previous year. He attributed it to “flights to Latin American countries (Mexico, Venezuela) and a number of West African countries (Mauritania, Guinea),” the paper wrote. Flight hours tripled in 2025, and the upswing meant that Gelix is “seen and entrusted with complex tasks in difficult climatic conditions, which opens up access to new tenders,” Baldin said.

“The guys who come to us to find a job imagine that they will work in white shirts,” Baldin was quoted by a company social media account in the Russian VK social network in March. “But we have slightly different conditions.”

Speaking to Defense News, Baldin confirmed that “Algeria is indeed an important hub for international logistics,” but emphasized that “it is only one of 36 countries to which our airline flies.”

He said it was “absolutely correct” that Algeria plays a key role due to its location, which makes it a key refueling point and cargo logistics point to extend the Russian Ilyushins’ reach.

The company is used to executing a range of special missions. In August of last year, the firm became the third in Russia to be licensed to transport nuclear materials and radioactive substances aboard planes, according to the Russian government agency Rostekhnadzor.

“There is a certain demand for the delivery of equipment that contains radioactive elements to polar stations,” the CEO was quoted as saying at the time.

The company has existed since the 1990s, but for decades was only a helicopter operator focused on regional tourism and local air lifts. Then, in 2021, the company received three heavy-lift Ilyushin Il-76D aircraft from the state-owned diamond mining company Alrosa. The aircraft are fully owned by Gelix, Baldin confirmed.

The new aircraft were reportedly based in Ulyanovsk, the Russian “aviation capital,” rather than Gelix’s longstanding headquarters in Perm. And despite being built in the years immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, the aircraft were retrofitted with the required gear specifically with an eye toward flying abroad, as Russian business journal Kommersant reported. In the same article, a Russian air freight director was cited as saying that the free market was currently “not the most favorable” for air cargo.

Operators flying the Ilyushin Il-76 are of particular interest to analysts, said analyst Garcia, as the aircraft type is renowned for having been used to transport weapons or troops. “We find them quite interesting when they’re taken on by private sector companies that are operating in areas that we know armed group activity occurs in,” she said. Gelix Airlines’ shift from decades of helicopter operations to long-haul Il-76 flights to unstable parts of the world stands out as a red flag, she said.

“Indeed, the life of Gelix Airlines has taken a dramatic turn since my arrival as director,” Baldin told Defense News in an email.

Friends in high places

Aviacon Zitotrans, the charter operator of the majority of the Russian flights to Algeria in the past year, has also been known to fly military equipment elsewhere on Russia’s behalf. Ahead of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, an Aviacon Zitotrans-owned aircraft traveled to Venezuela, a story that was first reported by Defense News. Russian lawmakers later revealed that air defense systems were aboard the aircraft.

Like the Wagner group, many of the shadow airlines appear to have grown out of legitimate businesses that have found a lucrative gig in serving the Kremlin’s more sensitive missions. Prigozhin famously started his career as a restaurateur who catered Putin’s events before he branched out into military logistics, private security for major state-affiliated enterprises, and from there, into the world of private military contractors.

And like the web of actors surrounding the private military contractor world in Russia, which is comprised of opportunists, military veterans, and security forces protecting the oil and gas industry, the shadow airlines world, too, bears the hallmarks of a tangled web.

On several occasions, for example, aircraft linked to the sanctioned Aviacon Zitotrans were spotted operating under Gelix callsigns, including while flying out of a military airbase in Ethiopia and St. Petersburg.

Asked about the discrepancy, Gelix’s CEO, Vadim Baldin, told Defense News that it was an artifact of the aircraft leasing model. Databases used by journalists, he said, don’t necessarily update fast enough to reflect who is operating aircraft that are merely leased to temporarily expand a fleet rather than owned by an airline.

The leaders of both companies appear well-established in the relevant political circles, and both have ties to the Russian Federation’s government. Baldin, who has led Gelix since 2020, represented the Russian Federation on the boards of two state-owned military-industrial companies – Special Design Bureau Salyut, a defense electronics manufacturer, and Design Bureau Gorizont, an avionics and special-purpose electronics maker – between 2014 and 2017, according to Russian bibliographical database viperson.ru. Both are subordinate to Minpromtorg, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade.

He has also posted on Telegram about awards for completing training with the ruling party’s United Russia Party Higher Party School and funding a monument for soldiers killed during the so-called “Special Military Operation,” the Russian government’s state-approved euphemism for the war in Ukraine.

Baldin, born in 1974, has previously served as the deputy chairman of the Expert Council of the Commission of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs on the Military-Industrial Complex and aerospace-related advisory bodies. Combined with his educational and practical background in civil aviation, this placed him at the critical nexus between the military and civil worlds at which Russia’s shadow airlines operate.

Of Gelix’s flights tracked for this investigation, more than three-quarters stopped at Russian military aviation plants before heading to Algeria, more than any other operator.

The owner of Aviacon Zitotrans, Valery Savelyev, meanwhile, has served as a regional deputy for Putin’s “United Russia” ruling party.

Unlike Aviacon Zitotrans, Gelix Airlines, the operator that flew repeatedly via Algeria to West Africa, is not sanctioned by any country.

The Russian and Algerian governments, as well as Aviacon Zitotrans, did not immediately respond to a request for comment in time for publication. Volga-Dnepr Airlines acknowledged receipt of Defense News’ questions but did not provide answers by press time.