Northern Fleet soldiers killed in plane crash in occupied Crimea
A military An-26 aircraft crashed into rocky terrain east of Sevastopol, killing seven crew members and 23 personnel on board.
The Soviet-built turboprop aircraft went down at around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, 31 March. The plane's wreckage was found a few hours later. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said a technical malfunction is believed to have cause the crash.
According to the newspaper Kommersant, the aircraft was en route to the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s Kacha military airfield near Sevastopol when air traffic controllers lost contact with it.
Murmansk Governor Andrei Chibis was the first to confirm, in a post on VKontakte, that the aircraft was carrying Northern Fleet personnel.
“The families of the victims will be provided with all necessary assistance and support,” Chibis said.
It remains unclear whether all those on board, or the aircraft itself, were attached to the Northern Fleet. Both the Black Sea Fleet and the Northern Fleet operate An-26 aircraft. On the Kola Peninsula, An-26 aircraft are based at the Severomorsk-1 airfield.
The Russian service of BBC reported one of the victims to be Commander of the Northern Fleet’s mixed aviation corps, Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Ostroshchenko.
The Antonov An-26 is a military cargo variant of the An-24 regional passenger airliner. The principal difference between the two types is that the An-26 features a redesigned rear fuselage equipped with a loading ramp.
The aircraft type, introduced in the late 1960s, has been involved in dozens of fatal crashes over its service life.
The Crimean Peninsula is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine but was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
