Russian military plane crashes in Crimea, killing 29 people

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.

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.

The Soviet-designed military transport turboprop aircraft crashed into a cliff, sources at the scene told state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti.

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.

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.

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.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has since administered it as Russian.  

Previous Russian military plane crashes

Accidents involving Russian military planes have been frequent since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in 2022.

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.

In March 2024, a Russian military transport plane with 15 people on board crashed while taking off from an air base in western Russia. That crash came just weeks after the same type of plane went down near the Ukrainian border.

In January 2024, Russia said Ukraine had downed an Il-76 —  carrying 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.

In October 2022, a Su-34 bomber crashed into a residential area of Yeysk, a Russian city on the Azov sea, sparking a massive fire and killing 15 people.