Russian Military Transport Plane Crashes in Crimea, Killing 29

The crash occurred over Crimea, a peninsula that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Published: 4/3/2026, 8:41:16 PM EDT

Russian Military Transport Plane Crashes in Crimea, Killing 29 — A AN-26 at a base in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on March 9, 2014. (Na Son Nguyen/AP Photo)

A Russian An-26 military transport plane crashed into a cliff on the Crimean Peninsula on Tuesday, killing all 29 people aboard, according to Russia's Defense Ministry, as cited by state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti.

The plane disappeared from contact at around 6 p.m. local time (3 p.m. GMT) while on a scheduled flight over Crimea, according to TASS, which quoted the Defense Ministry. A military search team located the wreckage shortly after and confirmed there were no survivors.

The Defense Ministry said the dead included six crew members and 23 passengers. However, Russia's Investigative Committee offered a slightly different accounting, saying the plane carried seven crew members and 22 passengers. No official explanation for the discrepancy between the two statements was immediately provided.

Russian military officials moved quickly to rule out hostile action. "There was no impact on the aircraft," the Defense Ministry told TASS—language interpreted as ruling out missiles, drones, or bird strikes as contributing factors. "The preliminary cause of the crash is a technical malfunction. A commission from the military is working at the site," the ministry said.

The crash occurred over Crimea, a peninsula Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in March 2014. The region features expansive mountain ranges that descend toward the Black Sea coastline.

The Soviet-designed An-26 is a light tactical turboprop transport that has been in service since the late 1960s, and is capable of carrying cargo along with up to 40 passengers on short and medium-range routes.

Troubling Safety History

The aging aircraft has accumulated a troubled safety record over recent years.

A Ukrainian An-26 crashed in 2022 in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing one person. Earlier, in 2020, another An-26 went down during a training flight in northeastern Ukraine, killing all but one of the 27 people on board. That same year, eight people—including five Russians—died when an An-26 crashed in South Sudan, and four of 10 people aboard were killed when one crashed on landing in Ivory Coast, West Africa, in 2017.

Accidents involving Russian military planes have become increasingly frequent since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine. In December 2025, an An-22 transport plane crashed in Russia's Ivanovo region, killing seven crew members. A MiG-31 fighter jet crashed in the Lipetsk region in October 2025, and a Tu-22M3 bomber went down in the Siberian region of Irkutsk in April 2025. 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 that killed 15 people.

Russia's Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NTD News.