Elon Musk's Teen Nemesis Launches Bot Tracking Russian Oligarchs' Private Planes

A teenager who first got famous for tracking and releasing the private airplane information of billionaire Elon Musk has launched a new bot on Monday, Feb. 28, that tracks the private airplanes of well-known Russian oligarchs and other Russian elites.

The bot Russian Oligarchs Jets, which has received over 53,000 followers in just a few days since launching, tracks the private airplane travels of notable Russian industry titans like Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich and Russia’s wealthiest person Vladimir Potanin, the New York Post reported.

Nineteen-year-old Jack Sweeney, who created the Twitter account in the first place, said that interest in the movements of the Russian oligarchs due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict prompted him to make the bot and track this information down, according to NBC News.

“People have been asking me about Putin for a while. They wanted to know if they could track him,” Sweeney said.

Figuring that tracking the Russian elites would be easier to do than tracking the famously-reclusive Russian President, Sweeney set up a bot that showed real-time new information of the jet-set lifestyles of the wealthy Russian oligarchs.

“Before this, I didn’t even know there were these [influential] oligarchs like this,” he said. “They probably do have a decent amount of power from what I can understand.”

Many people in the West, including international affairs expert Howard Stoffer, are keen on exposing the movement and behaviors of the Russian oligarchs due to their belief that it would help in pressuring the country to negotiate a ceasefire or peace in Ukraine.

“They should be exposed, and they should be paying whatever price a country can extract from them,” Stoffer said. “Get these [airplane] tail numbers out. Tell the governments these are the people, this is where they're located and let them take whatever action they feel is appropriate.”

However, Colby Howard, the president of aviation tracking company Paragon Intel, said that the information found by Sweeney reveals very little useful information that can be utilized by intelligence companies to make critical decisions in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“One jet flying through Miami holding who knows who doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t tell you what information matters and what context do you need to make a decision,” Howard said.