Russian military plane crash kills 29 in Crimea

A Russian military plane has crashed in Crimea, killing 29 people on board, Russia’s Defence Ministry has told state media.

Wreckage of the An-26 aircraft was found after the plane lost contact with authorities during a “routine flight”, the ministry told Russian news agencies Tass and Ria-Novosti.

Technical issues appear to have caused the plane to crash into a cliff, with six crew members and 23 passengers on board, the ministry was quoted as saying. There does not seem to have been any survivors.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. The ministry reported no external damage to the aircraft, implying that missiles, drones or birds are not suspected of causing the crash.

Tass reported that communication with the plane was lost at about 18:00 local time (15:00 GMT) on Tuesday, and the wreckage was found following a search and rescue effort.

The An-26 is a Soviet-era aircraft mainly used in a military capacity to transport heavy cargo and smaller numbers of passengers over a short-to-medium distance. It is manufactured by the Ukrainian aerospace company Antonov.

The planes have been used since the late 1960s, but have been involved in several deadly crashes.

Twenty-six people, mostly cadets, were killed when a Ukrainian An-26 came down in Kharkiv in 2020. The following year, 28 people were killed in a crash in the Russian Far East and in 2022, one person was killed in a crash in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

Fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces has been ongoing in Crimea since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion four years ago.

Ukrainian strikes have largely targeted Russian military bases in the peninsula, which borders the partly Russian-occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly demanded Russia withdraw from Crimea as part of a ceasefire. In November, a US-backed peace plan proposed Kyiv would cede control of Crimea.