A Ukrainian An-26 troop carrier crashed on Thursday during a “technical flight” in the Zaporizhia region of southeastern Ukraine, killing one and injuring two, according to the regional administration . “Today at 9 a.m. (6 a.m. GMT), an An-26 that belonged to Ukraine crashed in the Mikhailivka district. The plane was performing a technical flight,” the regional administration announced on Telegram. of Zaporijjia, a large town close to the front line with the Russian troops.
The plane reportedly hit an electricity pylon
“We now know that there is one dead and two injured”, continues the press release, which specifies that “according to preliminary and still unconfirmed information, the plane hit an electricity pylon”. The Mikhailivka district, where the plane crashed, is located north of Zaporizhia, a few kilometers from the city’s airport. The Russian army, which attacked Ukraine on February 24, controls part of the south-east of the Zaporizhia region, where the front has stabilized a few tens of kilometers south-east of this industrial city of more of 700,000 inhabitants.
Zaporijjia, the main Ukrainian city still in the hands of kyiv in this part of the country, has also become the first stop for evacuees from Mariupol, a martyred city besieged for nearly 40 days by Russian troops. The Russian army said Friday, for its part, to aim for “total control of southern Ukraine and the Donbass region” to have a “land corridor to Crimea” annexed by Moscow in 2014.
The Antonov An-26 is a light transport aircraft designed in Ukraine during the Soviet era. 24 meters long, it can fly at a cruising speed of 440 km/h. One of them had crashed in October 2020 in northeastern Ukraine, killing 26 people, most of them students at a military school.