29 Dead as Russian Military Plane Slams Into Cliff

A routine military flight over Crimea ended in disaster on Tuesday, with a Russian An-26 transport plane slamming into a cliff, killing 29 people on board, according to Russian state media. The Defense Ministry, as cited by Tass, said the aircraft went missing around 6pm Moscow time during a scheduled flight over the peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, per the Guardian. The crash site was reported to be 15 miles east of the port city of Sevastopol, per the Moscow Times. The dead reportedly include 23 passengers and six crew members. Though some outlets described seven crew members, no survivors have been mentioned.

An initial assessment found the plane crashed into a cliff as a result of technical problems, Russian news outlets reported. The Defense Ministry said there was no evidence the plane had come under fire. The An-26, a twin-engine turboprop produced from 1969 to 1985, has a lengthy record of crashes over the last decade, with deaths reported in Côte d'Ivoire in 2017, in Ukraine and South Sudan in 2020, in Russia in 2021, and in Ukraine in 2022, per the Guardian and BBC. Authorities have not yet provided further information on the flight's purpose or the identities of those on board.