February 11, 2026 | 02:12 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A Russian-born Israeli journalist claimed he was kicked off Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's flight to Washington on Tuesday moments before takeoff. As Al Arabiya reported, the incident occurred after Israeli security agents said they needed to verify his "connections."
Nick Kolyohin, a freelance reporter, was scheduled to cover Netanyahu's meeting with US President Donald Trump for three Russian television channels, including Russia Today.
Unlike Netanyahu's last two trips to the United States, reporters were allowed this time to travel aboard the prime minister's plane, the Wing of Zion. But after Kolyohin boarded the media section with about 10 other journalists and stowed his bags, he said agents from Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service approached him and asked him to disembark.
The prime minister's office said in a statement to the Hebrew-language website Yedioth Ahronoth that it had stopped Kolyohin from boarding the flight "for security reasons."
"Security officials decided not to approve the reporter's inclusion in the prime minister's flight to Washington due to security concerns that cannot be detailed at this moment," the statement read, as reported by The Jerusalem Post.
In a statement carried by the same website, the Shin Bet said, "the service is entrusted, among other things, with the security of the Prime Minister. Within this framework, decisions are made to reduce the risk to the Prime Minister and the information in his environment."
"It makes no sense to treat a journalist like this whom you invited onto the flight, who boarded with all the other journalists, whose belongings were already stowed, and then at the last second, in front of everyone, you humiliate him and kick him off," Kolyohin told reporters by phone.
"And afterwards, you even present him as someone who poses a danger to the prime minister. They took my belongings and checked them as if there was a bomb," he added.
He said Shin Bet officers told him he was kicked out because his "connections" needed to be verified.
Kolyohin, 42, was born in Moscow and moved to Israel at the age of nine, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, during a large wave of Soviet Jewish immigration. He claimed to have served in the Israeli military and then worked for a government agency in the prime minister's office from 2011 to 2012, during one of Netanyahu's early terms in office.
He later worked for Israel's Channel 13 and the Israeli bureau of China's state-run media outlet, Xinhua News Agency. Currently, he said he holds only Israeli citizenship. He regularly works for international media outlets, including television channels in India and the UK.
Netanyahu was scheduled to arrive in Washington on Tuesday evening ahead of a crucial meeting with Trump on the Iran nuclear negotiations. Before boarding the plane, Netanyahu said he would present "principles" for the United States' nuclear negotiations to Trump when the two meet at the White House.
Read: Israel: Netanyahu Heads to US as Iran Negotiations Loom
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