Air Serbia JU134 to Moscow Turns Back Over Lithuania for a Security Recheck, With Aleksandar Vulin on Board

Air Serbia flight JU134 from Belgrade to Moscow turned around over Lithuania on the evening of November 3, 2026, and flew back to Belgrade so airport security could screen a passenger again. Serbian media named that passenger as Aleksandar Vulin, a former deputy prime minister and former intelligence chief under US sanctions, who denies skipping any check.

The Airbus A320, registered YU-APH according to flight-tracking data cited by One Mile at a Time, eventually reached Moscow on Wednesday morning, more than seven hours late.

What happened on the flight

JU134 was scheduled to leave Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport at 6:25 pm and departed at about 6:48 pm, according to the airport’s own listing and tracking data reported by BETA. The jet headed north toward Moscow Sheremetyevo and was over southern Lithuania when it turned around.

That was about 90 minutes after takeoff and more than halfway to Moscow, One Mile at a Time reported from the flight track. The aircraft landed back in Belgrade at about 10 pm local time.

Air Serbia said the aircraft returned because the airport’s security services had asked for additional security checks on one passenger, Tanjug reported. The airline did not name the passenger and said, in comments carried by N1, that passenger and baggage screening falls under the airport’s security system.

On the ground, passengers and their baggage went through screening again, and the airport handled the aircraft under a bomb-threat procedure, according to N1. Passengers reboarded shortly before 2 am on Wednesday, and the flight left for Moscow again.

What prosecutors say happened at the checkpoint

Belgrade’s Third Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office said on November 4 that it had opened a case, Nova.rs reported. According to the office, one passenger went through the checkpoint escorted by a member of the BIA, Serbia’s security intelligence agency, and set off an alarm, but was not given the additional check that should have followed.

The prosecutors did not name the passenger. They said the case will establish whether anyone’s conduct amounts to a criminal offense, and that police are to collect documents, camera footage and witness statements.

Nova.rs had earlier reported, citing unnamed sources, that the passenger was Vulin, and that Belgrade Airport’s director of corporate security, Milan Kuč, ordered the plane back after reviewing camera footage. N1 relayed that account and said it had no official confirmation.

Vulin’s denial and who else was on board

Vulin rejects the account. He told Serbian media that he passed every security check and called the return order harassment, Tanjug reported, and in comments carried by N1 he said “it’s all a lie” and a political attack.

He said he slept on the flight and woke up in Belgrade, and that he was traveling to Moscow on official business to negotiate an extension of Serbia’s gas arrangement with Russia.

Also on board, according to N1 and Tanjug, were Srbijagas director Dušan Bajatović and Nenad Popović, a minister without portfolio in Serbia’s caretaker government. Bajatović said about 150 people were on the flight, mostly Russian citizens, and that he did not know why Vulin and Popović were traveling.

Why the passenger matters

Vulin is known for strongly pro-Russian views. The US Treasury sanctioned him on July 11, 2023, while he headed the BIA, for corruption that it said also helped Russian malign activity in the region, according to the Treasury’s announcement.

He is a longtime ally of Aleksandar Vučić, whose list lost Serbia’s October 25 parliamentary election to the opposition Student List, a defeat Vučić conceded that night, as Euronews reported. The flight came nine days later.

How a security turnback works

Airline security rests on the idea of a screened cabin: every passenger and bag on board has been checked before departure. If the airport learns after takeoff that one person may have bypassed that, it can no longer vouch for the cabin, and bringing the aircraft back is the way to redo the check.

That explains why, on JU134, all passengers and their bags went back through screening, not only the one passenger in question.

Belgrade to Moscow flights have been turned back on security grounds before. In March 2022, weeks into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an Air Serbia flight to Moscow returned to Belgrade after an emailed bomb threat that police later found to be false, Radio Free Europe reported. The interior ministry counted four false bomb threats in six days at the time.

One of Europe’s last links to Moscow

Serbia has not joined EU sanctions on Russia, and Air Serbia is one of the few European airlines still flying there. It runs two to three daily Belgrade to Moscow flights and also serves St. Petersburg, Sochi and Kazan, Radio Free Europe reported in March 2026.

Those flights draw attention. Flightradar24 said JU134 briefly became the most tracked flight in the world on Tuesday evening, according to EU Alive.

At the time of writing, the claim that Vulin was the passenger who skipped the check rested on unofficial sources, and he disputes it.