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A Russian military plane crash in annexed Crimea has killed six crew and 23 passengers, Russian news agencies reported in the early hours of Wednesday, citing the Defense Ministry.<\/p>\n
The An-26 military transport plane was carrying out a scheduled flight over the Crimean Peninsula, the reports said. The military lost contact with the plane around 6 p.m. on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Soviet-designed military transport turboprop aircraft crashed into a cliff, sources at the scene told state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti.<\/p>\n
Russia’s Investigative Committee said a total of seven crew members and 23 passengers were on board. It wasn’t immediately clear from official statements if one crew member has survived.<\/p>\n
The Investigative Committee said it has launched a criminal probe in connection with flight regulations and a search is underway in a mountainous forested area in the Bakhchisarai district.<\/p>\n
The Interfax news agency cited the Defense Ministry as saying a suspected technical malfunction may have caused the crash and that there was no “damaging interference” with the aircraft.<\/p>\n
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has since administered it as Russian.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Accidents involving Russian military planes have been frequent since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine<\/span>\u00a0in 2022.<\/p>\n In December, an An-22 military transport plane crashed in Russia’s Ivanovo region, killing seven crew. In October, a MiG-31 fighter jet crashed in the Lipetsk region, while a Tu-22M3 bomber crashed in the Siberian region of Irkutsk in April 2025.<\/p>\n In March 2024, a Russian military transport plane with 15 people on board<\/span> crashed while taking off from an air base in western Russia. That crash came just weeks after the same type of plane\u00a0went down<\/span>\u00a0near the Ukrainian border.<\/p>\n In January 2024, Russia said\u00a0Ukraine had downed an Il-76<\/span>\u00a0— \u00a0carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war — near the countries’ shared border. A U.S. official told CBS News at the time that there were no immediate indications that a missile fired from Ukraine had struck the plane, and that it remained unclear whether there were Ukrainians on board the aircraft.<\/p>\n In October 2022, a Su-34 bomber crashed<\/span> into a residential area of Yeysk, a Russian city on the Azov sea, sparking a massive fire and killing 15 people.<\/p>\n