A Russian military transport plane carrying 15 people crashed on takeoff, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
The ministry said that an Il-76 aircraft with eight crew members and seven passengers on board crashed in the Ivanovo region, roughly 435 miles from the border with Ukraine. It is unclear if there are any survivors, but the governor of Ivanovo, Stanislav Voskresensky, offered condolences to the families of the victims.
In Short:
- According to authorities, the Il-76 was carrying 15 people, including eight crew members and seven passengers.
- Russian media also shared images that claim to show wreckage from the crash site.
- The Ukrainian military shot down an Il-76 in the Beograd region of Russia in January. The aircraft was reportedly carrying Ukrainian prisoners.
- The Russian government has denied Ukrainian requests to return the bodies of prisoners who were allegedly killed in the shootdown.
Online unconfirmed footage shows the plane descending to the ground while a plume of black smoke trailed behind it, and one of its engines was on fire. The ministry said that an engine fire during takeoff was the likely cause of the crash. The Interfax news agency wrote that the plane crash occurred “during takeoff for a scheduled flight”.
The additional footage showed a crash site, with smoke rising from behind a canopy of trees. A helicopter can be seen circling in the background. According to the Russian Defence Ministry, a group of investigators flew to Ivanovo to conduct a investigation.
It is the second time this year that a Russian Il-76 military transport plane has crashed. Moscow claimed that another Il-76 crashed two months ago, carrying dozens of Ukrainian POWs.
The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed at the time that all 74 people on board – including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war – were killed after the plane went down near the border with Ukraine.
Russia maintains that Ukraine shot down the plane. At the time, neither Ukrainian military intelligence nor Ukraine’s army confirmed that Ukraine had shot down the plane but accused the Russian army of having used military transport planes to deliver missiles to the Belgorod region in order to perform cross-border attacks in recent weeks – which they linked to Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities, such as Kyiv.
“With this in mind, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to take measures to destroy means of delivery and exercise airspace control to eliminate the terrorist threat, including in the Belgorod-Kharkiv direction,” the army said on Telegram. It added that Russia’s accusations could amount to “a planned action to destabilise the situation in Ukraine and weaken international support for our state”.
Regarding the latest crash, video posted on the Telegram messenger app by Baza, a channel linked to Russian security services, showed a large aircraft falling towards the ground and bursting into flames. State media outlet Shot issued a statement on Telegram suggesting that bodies had been discovered at the site of the crash today, which will likely be quickly cordoned off by Russian security services. There was no word on casualities from the Russian Defence Ministry.
War Gonzo, a Russian military blogger who has been approved by the Kremlin to comment on war, claimed that the plane had taken off from the Severny airfield in Ivanovo.
The airfield, roughly 430 miles from the border with Ukraine, was reportedly targeted by Ukrainian intelligence forces in May last year using drones loaded with explosives.
According to Russian security services, they had intended to hit an A-50 reconnaissance warplane worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed to have prevented the attack.
The airfield has been known to accommodate multiple military transport and recon planes.
Ukraine has intensified attacks on Russian territory in recent months, as it faces a difficult situation against Russian forces at multiple points across the 600-mile frontline. It has had success with strikes on Russian war ships in its Black Sea Fleet around occupied Crimea and attacks on infrastructure – particularly energy infrastructure in recent weeks – hundreds of miles into Russia.
On Tuesday, Ukraine pounded targets across the country, with at least 25 drones and nine rockets, in a sweeping attack that one Russian official said had triggered a fire at a major refinery.
Russian officials reported attacks on a slew of energy facilities, including a fire at Lukoil’s NORSI refinery and the destruction of a drone on the outskirts of the town of Kirishi. Gleb Nikitin, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, posted a picture of the NORSI refinery and said that emergency services were working to put out a fire there.
“A fuel and energy complex facility was attacked by unmanned aerial vehicles,” Mr Nikitin said on Telegram. Russian Telegram channels said a crude distillation unit at the refinery had been damaged and was on fire.
The Baza Telegram channel reported that Lukoil’s Nizhny Novgorod refinery had also been hit, and displayed pictures of a plume of black smoke rising into the air and a major fire.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had shot down 25 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, including Moscow, Leningrad, Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk, Tula, and Oryol.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had fired eight RM-70 rockets and one Tochka-U missile at the Belgorod region, where some Russian war correspondents said there had also been an attempt by armed groups to cross into Russian territory.
Russia has faced sporadic incursions across its border from armed groups based in Ukraine that claim to be made up of Russians opposed to the Kremlin. Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence, told Ukraine’s 24 Channel that the groups were conducting the operation on Russian territory independently of Ukraine. But Kyiv has never made clear how such groups have received advanced weapons and armored vehicles.
Two Ukrainian-based armed groups, the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Siberian Battalion, claimed responsibility for the raids.
Mr. Yusov said that a third group, the Russian Volunteer Corps, was also participating in the operation.
Russia claimed its forces prevented any incursions from Ukraine and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers. The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukrainian “terrorist formations” backed by tanks and armoured combat vehicles tried to invade in three separate directions in Russia’s Belgorod region in the early hours of the morning.
It said that four more attacks by Ukrainian “sabotage and reconnaissance groups” were repulsed around five hours later in Russia’s Kursk region.
“We will take our land from the regime centimetre by centimetre,” the Legion said in a Telegram post.
The incidents occurred three days prior to the start of voting in a Russian presidential election where Vladimir Putin is expected to extend his presidency by six more years.
In a reference to the vote, the Freedom of Russia Legion posted on social media: “The people will vote for whom they want, not for whom they have to. Russians will live freely.”
