An interesting development took place yesterday in the skies of Lithuania. An Air Serbia plane, which had departed from Belgrade's Nikola Tesla Airport to Moscow, was ordered to return to Belgrade. According to unofficial information from the Nova.rs portal, the plane was carrying the leader of the Movement of Socialists, Aleksandar Vulin, the director of Srbijagas, Dušan Bajatović, and the leader of the Serbian People's Party (SNP), Nenad Popović. All three are considered Kremlin men in Belgrade. Vulin was also the head of the Serbian secret service, BIA, and one of the most loyal people of the defeated autocrat, Aleksandar Vučić.
According to information provided by independent Serbian media, the plane with flight number JU134 took off at 18:48 and had arrived near a city in southern Lithuania when it was ordered to return to Belgrade, reportedly for security reasons.
During the day, the leader of the Democratic Party, Srđan Milivojević, asked this question on the social network X: "Who is running away to Moscow tonight on the 6:30 PM flight?"
Meanwhile, the plane has returned to Belgrade. According to data from the Flightradar24 website, the plane landed in Belgrade shortly before 10:00 PM.
Nova.rs reports that Vulin did not undergo security checks at Belgrade airport and managed to board the plane. According to the same information, it is suspected that someone helped him. Nova.rs points out that, based on security camera footage, procedures were not followed, namely that Vulin did not undergo security checks.
Aleksandar Vulin is a pro-Russian politician and close associate of former Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Vulin has served as Minister of Defense and Minister of Interior, and from December 2022 to November 2023, he headed the Serbian secret service, BIA.
On July 11, 2023, the US sanctioned him for corruption, also accusing him of involvement in organized crime and illegal narcotics activities. According to the US Treasury, he assisted the sanctioned arms trafficker Slobodan Tešić and abused his power for personal gain. His name is associated with the “aunt from Canada” scandal: he claimed that his wife’s aunt from Canada had lent him 205,000 euros for an apartment. The anti-corruption agency did not believe this explanation; the prosecution closed the case due to lack of criminal evidence.
Washington also accused him of paving the way for Russian influence and Moscow's destabilizing activities in the Western Balkans. Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza accused him of handing over transcripts of wiretapping of Russian opposition figures in Belgrade to Nikolai Patrushev in 2021. Patrushev is a former director of the FSB, the Russian secret service, and one of Vladimir Putin's closest and most influential advisers on Russian security matters. Vulin is among the main promoters of the "srpski svet" - "Serbian world", a concept aimed at uniting Serbs beyond Serbia's borders.