Source: India Today
The infamous teenager known for creating an account on the social media platform Twitter to track the private jet of billionaire Elon Musk. Currently, he is seen to shift his vision and direct his talents to his new interest of the Russian oligarchs. This takes place as the invasion of Ukraine is carried out by Russia.
This new account on Twitter is titled “Russian Oligarch Jets,” and is reportedly created by the same teenager. The account had evidently initiated the tracking of the whereabouts of a number of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen. The account has been posting the details of when and where the aircrafts of these businessmen happened to land and take off from. This account appears to have an automated feed, and had posted it first tweet on the platform on Sunday, February 27. This was right after the Unite States sanctioned various members of the inner circle of Russian President Vladamir Putin. The sanctions came along with a pledge to hunt them down and “freeze their asset,” including luxurious items like their mansions and yachts.
This coming week, we will launch a multilateral Transatlantic task force to identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs – their yachts, their mansions, and any other ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze under the law.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 26, 2022
Russian billionaires still appear to be roaming around the world on their private planes and yacht in spite of the sanctions imposed. The sanctions were essentially directed towards financially crippling the elite of Russian society in order to retaliate for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A report from CNBC from Monday, February 28, indicated that some of the Russia’s elite had already started the displacement of their assets. These businessmen had reported initiated the movement of their megayachts to places like Maldives and Montenegro. Critics suspect that the movement was carried out to avoid seizure of these assets.
Seemingly, the jets, along with the private helicopters are on the go as well. This Russian Oligarch Jets account has already set off to track many flights taken by the aircrafts. Particularly, the account has tracked flights taken by the aircraft of Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire. The posts also indicated the tracking of one of his helicopter trips on Monday to the Caribbean.
https://twitter.com/RUOligarchJets/status/1498389923954675724?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1498389923954675724%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Felon-musk-jet-tracking-teen-russian-oligarch-jets-twitter-account-2022-2
Another similar account has reportedly been formed with agenda of trackings flights on airplanes, particularly under the registration of Vladamir Putin and other Russian VIPs. However, the college student behind these accounts, Jack Sweeney made a warning tweet He made a post on Twitter warning the people concerned that these locations are not highly accurately. He stated the reason behind this to be the fact that there are numerous VIP jets and not much flight data being available in Russia as of now.
Sweeney, aged 19, first gained recognition in January 2022 for making an account which tracked Elon Musk’s Jet movements. It was made in June 2020 and used bots to publicly gather air traffic information that is available. Musk had offered to pay him $5000 in a direct message to stop the tracking owing to security reasons. Sweeney , in turn, had asked for $50,000 which the billionaire had eventually declined.
