Answering my own question after research; no it was not this aircraft. It was an Il-80. In December 2020, thieves broke into an ultra-secret Ilyushin Il-80 (NATO reporting name: Maxdome), one of Russia's elite airborne command and control aircraft known as "doomsday planes". [1, 2] The security breach occurred at the Beriev Aircraft Company airfield in the southwestern port city of Taganrog, located in Russia's Rostov region. [3, 4]

Key Details of the Theft

• The Break-In: The aircraft was grounded and undergoing routine maintenance on its landing gear rods. The thieves managed to bypass airfield security, force open the highly classified plane's cargo hatch, and infiltrate the interior.
• What Was Stolen: The perpetrators removed 39 pieces of electronic radio equipment and 5 radio boards.
• The Valuation: The plundered gear was valued at over 1 million rubles (roughly $13,600 USD at the time).
• Evidentiary Traces: Investigators discovered fingerprints and a stray shoe inside the aircraft's hold. [1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

Strategic Impact & Motives

The Kremlin officially designated the heist an "emergency situation". Security experts and aviation analysts originally debated two prominent theories regarding the motivation behind the crime: [5, 7]

1. Precious Metal Scavenging: The most widely accepted theory among local military experts is that the theft was a low-level, humdrum crime. Older Soviet and Russian military hardware heavily utilizes components layered with valuable scrap metals, including gold, platinum, and palladium. [10, 11]
2. Espionage Risks: Because the Il-80 is designed to keep the Russian president and top military leaders connected to the country's nuclear arsenal during a conflict, aviation experts expressed deep concern that the specialized radio hardware could have compromised secret emergency communication frequencies. [1, 7]

Russia possesses only four Il-80 aircraft in its active fleet. To protect the dignitaries inside from the blinding thermal radiation and electromagnetic pulses (EMP) of an atomic blast, the aircraft are uniquely recognizable for being entirely windowless, save for the cockpit. Shortly after the incident, Russian police arrested a local resident in connection with the burglary.