A Russian warplane crashed into a residential building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk on Sunday, killing both crew members, authorities said. It was the second time in less than a week that a fighter jet crashed in a residential area of Russia.
The governor of the Irkutsk region, Igor Kobzev, said the Su-30 fighter jet crashed into a two-story private building housing two families. He said there were no casualties on the ground as all five residents of the building were outside at the time of the accident.
He said the residents will be provided with temporary accommodation and compensation.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known and an official investigation has been launched. On October 17, a Su-34 bomber crashed near an apartment building in the Sea of Azov port of Yeysk and exploded in a giant fireball, killing 15 and injuring 19 others.
The crashes could reflect the growing strain that fighting in Ukraine has put on Russia’s air force.
People gather at the site where a Russian military plane crashed into a residential building on Sunday. It was the second time in less than a week that a fighter jet crashed in a residential area of Russia. (Reuters)
United Aircraft Corporation, a state-controlled conglomerate of Russian aircraft manufacturing plants, said in a statement that the plane in Sunday’s incident went down during a training flight before its delivery to the air force The plane was not carrying weapons during the flight.
Surveillance camera videos posted on Russian social media showed the fighter in a near-vertical dive and then exploding. Other videos showed the building engulfed in flames and firefighters deployed to put out the fire.
Sunday’s crash was the 11th reported non-combat crash of a Russian warplane since Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine on February 24. Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights greatly increased during the fighting, so did the number of accidents.
Battle for the skies
Ukraine shot down 14 Russian “kamikaze” drones over Mykolaiv overnight, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram. The drones are designed to explode on impact and have struck Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this month.
Firefighters at the scene of a drone attack on buildings in Kyiv on Monday. Waves of suicide drones laden with explosives hit Ukraine’s capital, setting buildings on fire and sending people running for shelter. (Roman Hrytsyna/The Associated Press)
On Thursday, the US government alleged that Iran had sent trainers and technical support personnel to Crimea to help Russia stage strikes using Iranian-made drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that his military would improve its record of shooting down missiles with the help of its partners.
Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to NATO, said Western countries need to step up their support for Ukraine’s air defenses.
“Number one today, and it’s something we should have done months ago and I don’t know why we didn’t, is to provide Ukraine with much better air defenses than they currently have,” Volker told Rosemary Barton Live from CBC News.
“Nothing can stop every drone, every missile from getting through, but we can reduce the percentage that actually get through. And that would be point air defense systems that are very effective, weapons that are really good against Iranian drones. And also some longer-range air defense systems.”
LOOK | Former US ambassador to NATO calls for more air support for Ukraine:
Western allies must step up air aid as Ukraine battles drone strikes, expert says
As Russia pivots its war effort from its embattled ground invasion to airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to NATO, says the West must provide support much better air defense in Ukraine.
“Dirty bomb” claim rejected
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu alleged on Sunday that Ukraine was preparing a “provocation” involving a “dirty bomb,” a strong claim strongly rejected by Ukrainian and British officials amid rising tensions as Moscow struggle to stop Ukrainian advances in the south.
A dirty bomb is a device that uses explosives to disperse radioactive waste. It does not have the devastating effect of a nuclear explosion, but it could expose large areas to radioactive contamination.
Russia’s defense ministry said Shoigu made the allegation in phone calls with his counterparts in the United States, Britain, France and Turkey.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, is pictured with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Sergeevskyi training camp near Ussuriysk, in Russia’s far east, on September 6. Shoigu alleged on Sunday that Ukraine was planning to use a “dirty bomb,” a claim that was quickly dismissed. by foreign counterparts. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images)
Russian authorities have repeatedly suggested that Ukraine could detonate a dirty bomb in a false flag attack and blame it on Moscow. The Ukrainian authorities, in turn, have accused the Kremlin of blocking this plan.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace strongly rejected Shoigu’s claim during his call and warned Moscow not to use it as a pretext for escalation, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said.
Zelenskyy claimed that the international community did not believe Shoigu’s claims and implied that Moscow was preparing the stage to deploy a radioactive device on Ukrainian soil.
“If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it only means one thing: that Russia has already prepared everything,” Zelenskyy said in a televised speech on Sunday evening.
Ukraine’s top diplomat, Dmytro Kuleba, said his country does not have dirty bombs and has no plans to acquire them.
Russia targets civilian buildings and infrastructure
Under pressure in southern Ukraine, Russia fired missiles and drones at Ukrainian-held Mykolaiv on Sunday, destroying an apartment block in the shipbuilding city near the front.
The attack propelled shrapnel and debris across a plaza and into neighboring buildings where windows shattered and walls cracked. Cars were crushed under the debris, Reuters witnessed. No fatalities have been reported.
A residential building in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, is damaged after Russian airstrikes on Sunday. A nearby 10-story residential building was also damaged. (Southern Operational Command/The Associated Press)
Mykolaiv is about 35 km northwest of the front line in occupied Kherson, the southern region that is the target of a major offensive by Ukrainian forces to retake territory that Russia captured shortly after the invasion of February 24.
Ukraine’s advances in recent weeks around Kherson and in the country’s northeast have been seen by an intensification of Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure, which have destroyed nearly 40 percent of the country’s electricity system. ‘Ukraine before winter.
That figure is a jump from earlier in the week, when Zelenskyy said 30 percent of the country’s power plants had been destroyed since Oct. 10.
Residents try to put out a fire after a shelling in the town of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donbas region on Sunday. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images)
More than a million people were without power, presidential adviser Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. A municipal official said the strikes could leave Kyiv without electricity and heat for days or weeks.
Moscow has acknowledged that energy infrastructure was targeted, but denies that civilians were targeted.