Russian military plane crash in Crimea kills 29, defense ministry says

A Russian An-26 military transport plane slammed into a cliff in Crimea, killing all 29 people on board, with a possible technical malfunction emerging as the likely cause, according to Russia’s ⁠defence ministry as cited by news agencies.

TASS news agency, quoting the ministry, said contact with the aircraft was lost at about 6pm local time (4pm Irish time) while it was carrying out a planned flight over Crimea.

Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Crimea is marked by sweeping mountain ranges that descend toward the Black Sea coast.

“The defence ministry reported that a search team found the site of the catastrophe,” TASS reported.

The ministry’s statement did not specify how many people were aboard, but it made no reference to any survivors on the An-26, a light tactical military transport that has long served as a workhorse aircraft capable of carrying cargo and up to 40 passengers over ‌short and medium distances.

“There was no impact on the aircraft,” TASS quoted the ministry as saying, indicating that missiles, drones and birds ⁠were not believed to have played a role.

“The preliminary cause of the crash is a technical malfunction. A ‌commission from the military is working at the site,” it said.

The An-26 has been in service since the late 1960s and has also been used by commercial airlines for freight operations, but the aircraft type has been linked to ⁠a number of fatal crashes over the past decade.

In 2022, a Ukrainian An-26 crashed during a technical ⁠flight in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, killing one person. In 2020, another of the aircraft went down on a training flight in northeastern Ukraine, leaving only one survivor among the 27 people on board.

Eight people, including five Russians, were killed when an An-26 crashed in South Sudan in 2020.

Four of the ten people on board were killed when an An-26 crashed ‌while landing in Ivory Coast in West Africa in 2017.