Oleg Deripaska’s jet circles Beijing the week The Insider lawsuit lands in court

Oleg Deripaska’s Dassault Falcon 7X, tail RA-09618, departed and arrived at the same general aviation hub near Beijing on June 18, 2026, after a brief 286-knot hop at 9,050 feet. The flight’s zero-duration pattern suggests a positioning or test movement, not a cross-border trip.

This week, Deripaska is suing The Insider, its editor-in-chief Roman Dobrokhotov, and journalist Sergei Ezhov in the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Region, demanding a retraction of their investigation alleging he bought the $36 million jet through a Kazakh shell company in 2023 to dodge Western sanctions [theins.press](https://theins.press/en/news/278995). The suit seeks a court-ordered apology on Kommersant’s website and a daily 10,000-ruble penalty for non-compliance. The same report, corroborated by border records, traced Deripaska’s use of RA-09618 on multiple trips to China, India, and Kazakhstan in 2023.

Deripaska, sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 and the EU in 2022, has maintained a pattern of short-haul flights from Vnukovo to Chinese and Central Asian destinations for factory visits tied to his Rusal aluminum empire. This week’s legal battle in Krasnodar—where his Basel Aero runs three airports—keeps the jet’s ownership at the center of a broader sanctions-evasion narrative [theins.press](https://theins.press/en/inv/282052).