No Airplanes: Russians Want To Board 700 Old "corn Planes"
- 22.04.2026, 13:14
The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine has learned some interesting details.
Russia wants to put a large number of old An-2 airplanes, popularly nicknamed "kukuzniki", back into service. This is reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.
The Siberian Research Institute of Aviation proposed to put back into operation about 700 An-2s, which are now in storage. According to the initiators, this will help overcome the acute shortage of small aircraft.
The Russians have virtually no alternatives left. Due to sanctions, access to new equipment is significantly limited, and both Russian projects, which acted as a replacement for the An-2, did not meet expectations.
The Foreign Intelligence Service recalls that for the new Russian LMS-901 "Baikal" repeatedly postponed certification terms. First to 2025, then to 2026, and today they are already talking about 2027. Due to technical and financial difficulties, a specific date has not yet been set.
The second Russian project is the TVS-2MS. It is a deep modernization of the same AN-2, created without government funding. This direction was closed. Today, the Mongolian company MUNKH AERO plans to operate these airplanes at their place, using American engines.
According to experts, it is the engines that are the key problem for the restoration of 700 mothballed airplanes. In fact, there are only two options - and both look like dead ends.
American propulsion systems are unavailable due to sanctions, and the Russian TVD-10B still exists only on paper. Experts cautiously call the prospects of its serial production in conditions of financial and technical exhaustion of the industry "rather uncertain".
This is not the only problem in the issue of reanimation of old airplanes. The initiators of the project claim that airplane fuselages are only about one third worn out, but industry experts doubt the reliability of this estimate. It is likely that the actual condition of the planes is much worse than the Russian Federation assumes.
The Foreign Intelligence Service believes that if the deadline for the serial production of the Baikal is pushed back again and the engine issue remains unresolved, the situation will become critical.
Without air service, about 60% of the Russian territory - areas where there are neither roads nor railroads - are virtually isolated from the rest of the country.
So, residents of remote regions of the Russian Federation may face a situation when they can reach civilization only with the help of "ecologically clean track transport".