Kubinka opened in 1935, when the 82nd aviation detachment moved in, according to English Wikipedia drawing on Michael Holm’s database of Soviet units. In 1938 the 11th and 24th aviation regiments arrived, and the field was used to try out the fighters Stalin’s air force would take into the war, among them the Yak-1 and the LaGG-3. The Russian Knights, whose history page traces their parent centre to the same year, treat 1938 as Kubinka’s birth year as a display base; the team marked the 65th and 70th anniversaries in 2003 and 2008.

After the Second World War Kubinka was a front-line fighter base. The 324th Svirskaya Fighter Aviation Division was stationed there from November 1945 until it was sent to the Korean War in November 1950; the 9th Fighter Aviation Division followed in February 1951. The 32nd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment flew MiG-19s and then MiG-21F-13s, deployed to Cuba in 1962 and was disbanded on 1 July 1989.

The unit that defined Kubinka was formed in 1952 as the 234th regiment. Its job was to show aircraft, to foreign delegations and at parades, rather than to hold alert. It became the 237th Composite Aviation Regiment in 1989 and the 237th Centre for the Display of Aviation Equipment in 1992, and in August 1993 it was named after Ivan Kozhedub, the top-scoring Allied ace of the Second World War. In the 1990s, English Wikipedia lists MiG-29s, Su-17s, Su-24s, Su-25s and Su-27s on its strength.

The Russian Knights’ own history says a first Su-27 display group was put together at Kubinka in May 1989, when the Flankers arrived at the display centre. The team was formally born on 5 April 1991 with six pilots under Vladimir Basov. The MiG-29 team, the Swifts, followed on 6 May 1991. Both are regular air force units, staffed by serving pilots rather than professional display flyers.

What set the Knights apart was timing. According to the team, they made their first foreign appearance at Poznań in Poland on 24 August 1991, and in the autumn flew over Scotland and England, at Lakenheath and Finningley, alongside the Red Arrows; English Wikipedia says only that they were the first team to perform outside the Soviet Union, in September 1991. LIMA in Malaysia followed in December 1991, and in 1992 the team flew in Portland, Oregon, and Alaska.

The two teams also fly together. The team history describes a ten-aircraft formation for the display centre’s 65th anniversary in March 2003, a nine-aircraft mixed formation of five Su-27s and four MiG-29s in 2004, and the “Kubinka Diamond”, a nine-ship formation first shown at MAKS 2007. Combined formations flew over Red Square on Victory Day in 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2015.

The equipment has moved on. The Russian Knights flew Su-27s from 1991 and briefly trialled pre-production Su-27Ms, delivered to Kubinka in 2003 according to English Wikipedia’s Su-35 article. In October 2016 they converted to eight Su-30SMs, and Su-35Ss followed; the date is given as November 2019 in one Wikipedia article and July 2020 in another.

Display flying at this level has cost lives. On 12 December 1995 the Russian Knights lost two Su-27s and a Su-27UB on approach to Cam Ranh in Vietnam, following an Il-76 in bad weather; four pilots were killed. English Wikipedia attributes the accident to a misinterpretation of approach instructions in bad weather. The team named the dead as Colonel Boris Grigoryev and Lieutenant Colonels Alexander Syrovoi, Nikolay Grechanov and Nikolay Kordyukov, and a monument was raised at their grave near Kubinka in October 1996.

On 16 August 2009, rehearsing near Moscow for the MAKS show, two of the team’s Su-27s collided; the team leader, Guards Colonel Igor Tkachenko, was killed, and wreckage fell on holiday homes, according to English Wikipedia. He was made a Hero of the Russian Federation by a decree of 22 August 2009. On 9 June 2016 another Su-27 of the team crashed near Moscow and its pilot, who did not eject as he steered away from houses, was killed.

Not every loss at Kubinka was a display aircraft. On 17 August 2021 the only flying prototype of the Il-112V light transport, RF-41400, caught fire in its right engine and crashed near the airfield, killing its three crew, among them the test pilot Nikolai Kuimov.

Beside the airfield lies Patriot Park, which English Wikipedia describes as a park themed on Russian military equipment and the Soviet victory in the Second World War, covering 5,414 hectares, 3,530 of them military. It includes the Kubinka air base aviation museum and the Kubinka Tank Museum, has hosted the International Military-Technical Forum “Army” since 2015, and in 2020 gained the Main Cathedral of the Armed Forces. Wikipedia gives 2016 as the park’s official opening year.

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Kubinka has been a potential target like any other air base in western Russia. English Wikipedia, citing the Kyiv Post, reports that a Ukrainian drone attack caused fires at the base on 7 May 2025; no damage to aircraft has been confirmed by an independent source. What is based at Kubinka today beyond the two display teams is not published here.