Russian military transport plane crash, killing 29. Defence Ministry says
An-26 slams inti cliff on planned flight over peninsula, technical malfunction suspected, no survivers
A Russian military transport aircraft, the Antonov An-26, crashed into a cliff in Crimea, killing all 29 people on board, according to the country’s defence ministry.
The aircraft lost contact around 6:00pm local time on Tuesday while on a scheduled flight over Crimea, a region annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. Search teams later located the crash site, confirming that all six crew members and 23 passengers had died.
Officials said there were no signs of external interference, ruling out causes such as missiles, drones, or bird strikes. Early assessments suggest the crash was likely due to a technical failure, and a military investigation is currently underway.
The An-26, a light military transport plane introduced in the late 1960s, has long been used for carrying cargo and passengers over short to medium distances. However, it has been involved in several fatal accidents in recent years.
In 2022, a Ukrainian An-26 crashed during a technical flight in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing one person. Another crash in northeastern Ukraine in 2020 claimed nearly all 27 people on board. That same year, eight people died in an An-26 crash in South Sudan, and in 2017, four people were killed when the aircraft went down during landing in Ivory Coast.
