A Russian military transport plane crashed in Russian-annexed Crimea on 31 March 2026, killing at least 29 people on board, Russian state news agencies reported.
TASS, citing the Defense Ministry, said six crew members and 23 passengers were killed. Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed the An-26 went down in flight near the village of Kuibyshevo in the Bakhchysaray district of Crimea but initially gave no death toll. The committee later said there were seven crew and 23 passengers on board and has opened a criminal investigation into a possible flight safety violation.
The Antonov An-26 was on a scheduled flight over the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The military reported losing contact with the plane at about 6 p.m. local time (1500 GMT) on Tuesday. Interfax quoted the Defense Ministry as attributing the crash to a technical malfunction and saying there was no evidence of damaging external interference. State outlets TASS and RIA Novosti cited sources at the scene who said the transport plane struck a cliff.
The crash comes amid a series of accidents involving Russian military aircraft since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Recent incidents include an An-22 that crashed in the Ivanovo region in December, killing seven crew; a MiG-31 crash in the Lipetsk region in October during a landing attempt; an Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane that went down shortly after takeoff northeast of Moscow in December 2024, killing all 15 on board; and a Su-34 bomber that crashed into a residential area of Yeysk in October 2022.
Edited by: Karl Sexton