The Russian Ilyushin IL-96 quad-jet that brought Lavrov will not be able to leave Rio for Brasília due to a lack of supply.
As AEROIN has shown, several diplomatic jets arrived in Rio de Janeiro this week for the pre-G20 meeting being held with Foreign Ministers from the main countries in the world.
And Russia sent Sergey Lavrov, a great Russian politician known for consistently defending the invasion of Ukraine that has been taking place since 2014. He arrived in Rio aboard a Russian state Ilyushin IL-96 quadrijet, which made stops in Cuba and Venezuela.
After the G20 meeting in November in Rio, the Russian chancellor would go to Brasília (in the opposite direction taken by his American counterpart, Antony Blinken), to take advantage of his time in Brazil to meet with President Lula.
But this meeting was almost cancelled, as revealed by Valor Econômico magazine. And the reason has to do with the USA: Because he is one of the key players in the Russian government and a supporter of the invasion, Lavrov is sanctioned by the Americans.
These sanctions include not only him as an individual, but also companies that provide any type of service to him. In this way, fuel suppliers that eventually service any aircraft used by Lavrov could be sanctioned and banned from doing business with the US, including private American companies.
And fearing this, VIBRA, which is the former BR Distribuidora that was once a division of Petrobrás, denied the supply of IL-96 in Brasília. Refueling the Ilyushin in the Brazilian federal capital would be necessary for it to be able to go non-stop to Casablanca, where it will be refueled again to reach Russia via the new routes that avoid European airspace.
If VIBRA supplied the IL-96, it could be prevented from selling fuel to American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines, which are the American airlines that regularly operate in Brazil.
The fuel company preferred not to comment on the matter, and according to the magazine, the supply for departure from Rio to Morocco was guaranteed by Jetfly Combustíveis.
In order not to cancel the meeting, the Brazilian government consulted the Brazilian Air Force about the availability of aviation kerosene (JETA1) at the Galeão Air Base, but the military informed that they would not have enough available.
One option presented to Sergey Lavrov would be to return to Rio for supplies before heading to Morocco, making a longer loop, which was denied by the Russians. With no remaining options, it was agreed that the Russian minister would travel by FAB jet to Brasília on the flight that would take Mauro Vieira, from Itamaraty.
It is unclear whether Vieira will accompany Lavrov on the return flight to Rio, where he is scheduled to leave on Friday with the IL-96 to Morocco. It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Lavrov has come to Brazil or Brasília after the war, but the last time he only made one stop in the country, exactly in the federal capital, and it was not informed at the time whether the aircraft had been refueled.
The case now in Brasília is reminiscent of another: that of the Boeing 747-300 from Venezuelan Emtrasur, which was denied refueling in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil. The Jumbo was trapped in Buenos Aires until it was confiscated by the US and taken to Florida recently:
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