Video shows final moments of Russian bomber seconds before explosion
Dramatic video shows final moments of Su-34 bomber as pilots eject seconds before it explodes in a fireball, killing 15 people in Russian apartment block
- Russian Su-34 fighter/bomber jet crashed in city of Yeysk, southern Russia, shortly after take-off on Monday
- Fireball set block of flats ablaze, killing 13 including three children and three adults who jumped from top floor
- Pilots ejected, with one filmed lying on the ground attached to his parachute as he denied jet was shot down
- Russian military said the plane suffered an engine fire while taking off on a training flight before crashing
A dramatic video shows the final seconds of the Russian Su-34 bomber which destroyed an apartment block in Yeysk as the death toll rose to 15 on Tuesday.
The Sukhoi 34 fighter-bomber was taking off from an airfield in the southern Russian city of Yeysk, near the border with Ukraine, on Monday evening when it plunged from the sky moments later with one engine on fire — slamming into the ground in front of an apartment block and dousing the building in burning fuel.
Both pilots ejected safely, with footage showing one of them on the ground nearby still attached to his parachute.
The stricken low-flying plane which is believed to have been on a mission to attack Ukraine.
Other claims are that the warplane was on a training mission.
If so, it is not clear why it had ammunition on board which exploded when the aircraft hit the yard of the apartment block.
The crewmen may have ejected after they realised a crash was inevitable and could not fly the plane away from the residential building.
The death toll in the apartment block has hit 15, including three children and three adults who jumped from a burning apartment block after a Russian military jet crashed next to the building and set it on fire.
This is the extraordinary moment a Russian Su-34 fighter/bomber jet crashed next to an apartment block in the city of Yeysk yesterday evening, setting the building on fire as the pilots ejected (right)
Video showed one of the pilots on the floor and still attached to his parachute shortly after the crash (left) and right, denying the plane was shot down as people try to help him
The damaged apartment block in the Russian city of Yeysk after a military jet crashed close by it, throwing one wheel of the aircraft into the side of the building (centre left)
The chassis of a Sukhoi Su-34 military jet sticks out of the partially destroyed nine-storey apartment building after it crashed in the courtyard of a residential area
Firefighters who spent the night extinguishing a blaze in the apartment block said early on Tuesday that 13 people had died in the fire, including three children and three adults who jumped from the top floor
Wreckage of the Su-34 jet is seen in the courtyard of an apartment block next to burned-out cars after it crashed
Fire crews inspect the wreckage of jet engines from the Su-34 fighter-bomber after it crashed in Yeysk, in southern Russian near the border with Ukraine, on Monday night
The red star of the Russian air force is seen on the tail fin of the aircraft which crashed shortly after take-off on a training flight
Russia’s Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft
The Sukhoi Su-34 is a Russian-made supersonic fighter-bomber aircraft.
It was developed in the 1990s to replace its ageing predecessor, the Su-24, but did not enter widespread use with Russia’s air force until well into the 2000s.
The Su-34 is considered a fairly capable multi-role aircraft, in that it is primarily designed to strike ground and surface targets with missiles and bombs, but can also engage in air-to-air combat missions.
However, it has a reputation for being accident prone.
On two separate occasions in 2019, two pairs of Su-34s collided during training exercises, and a fifth jet crashed during a training mission in 2020.
The Russian military said the men were taking part in training when the crash happened and the stranded pilot can be heard denying the craft was shot down as people try to help him.
The crash is yet another humiliating loss for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s beleaguered air force, which has now suffered ten non-combat crashes since the start of the war.
His pilots have also failed to destroy Ukraine’s much smaller air force and are limited to operating behind Russian lines after failing to take out Kyiv’s air defences.
Footage of the pilot lying on the ground also appears to capture the sound of explosions in the background, sparking rumours on Russian social media that the plane was flying a combat mission and ammunition detonated after it came down.
But Krasnodar regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev denied this, saying the explosions were fuel tanks bursting.
Russian outlet Zvezdanews reported the fire was extinguished with the help of 410 firefighters and emergency services personnel.
Deputy governor Anna Minkova said additional beds were being prepared for injured civilians, adding: ‘Specialists of the burn department from regional clinical hospitals have been sent to Yeysk.’
Putin was informed of the fire and ordered ‘all necessary assistance be given to casualties from the military plane incident’, the Kremlin told state-run news agency TASS.
Victims of the Russian jet crash are taken to hospital, as firefighters say 19 were hurt in the blaze – but did not give an update on their exact conditions
A victim of a Russian plane crash is rushed on to an air ambulance on Monday after a military jet slammed into the ground near an apartment block
A resident injured in a jet crash in the Russian city of Yeysk, in the south of the country near the border with Ukraine, is rushed to hospital
The aircraft ploughed into the block of flats in Yeysk, a resort city on the Sea of Azov near Crimea, causing an inferno
A Russian Su-34 warplane crashed in Yeysk, a city in the Krasnodar region, causing an apartment block fire
The Su-34 bomber was on a training flight when it malfunctioned and ploughed into the block of flats in Yeysk, a resort city on the Sea of Azov near Crimea
The Russian ministry of defence said: ‘On October 17, 2022, while climbing to perform a training flight from the military airfield of the southern military district, a Su-34 aircraft crashed. The aircraft crashed within the city of Yeysk.
‘According to the report of the ejected pilots, the cause of the plane crash was the ignition of one of the engines during take-off.
‘At the site of the crash of the Su-34 in the courtyard of one of the residential areas, the fuel of the aircraft ignited.’
Aleksandr Kots, chief war correspondent for pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said the aircraft was an Su-34 from Russia’s 277th Bombing Aviation Regiment.
‘So far, the main version is that it was birds getting into the engines at take-off,’ he claimed.
Firefighters, helicopters and ambulances went to the nine-floor apartment block, with Mr Kondratyev declaring all regional emergency services were working to put out the fire.
‘The fire spread to a few floors. According to preliminary information, 17 flats have been affected,’ the governor added.
Russia’s investigative committee, which probes serious crimes, said it had opened a criminal investigation into the crash.
The first to fifth floors of the block were set ablaze, witnesses said.
One report said emergency services were struggling to extinguish the flames, which had spread throughout the building, exacerbated by jet fuel spewed across the crash site.
Several stories of the apartment block in southern Russia could be seen alight as huge flames ripped through the residential building
A soldier guards part of the wreckage of a Russian fighter/bomber jet that crashed into the city of Yeysk late on Monday, as the military says the aircraft was taking part in a training flight when it came down
Police gather near the site of a Russian plane crash in the city of Yeysk, with a scorched apartment building visible in the background which caught fire after the jet’s fuel exploded
The Sukhoi Su-34 (file pic) is a Russian-made supersonic fighter-bomber aircraft. It is considered a fairly capable multi-role jet that can be used to strike targets as a bomber or engage in air-to-air combat, but it has a questionable safety record with several crashes in training exercises in recent years
Oksana, a resident who declined to give her last name, said the area was cordoned off.
‘There could be an explosion. Everything is burning inside. there is smoke,’ she told AFP.
‘I’m in shock obviously. My child was alone at home. We already used to go to sleep with fear every day – Mariupol is just across from us,’ she said, referring to the Ukrainian port across the Sea of Azov which withstood months of heavy bombardment earlier in the war.
Former Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak said: ‘It’s scary to imagine how many dead there will be.’
Just a few hundred miles across the border from Yeysk, Ukrainian civilians experienced more terror yesterday as Iranian-made kamikaze drones launched by Russia attacked Kyiv in the morning.
At least five explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital, starting around 3.30am on Monday as waves of Shahed-136 drones – 28 in total – dodged air defences and slammed into the city, with police and armed forces resorting to firing machine guns into the air in an attempt to bring them down.
One of the drones bore the phrase ‘for Belgorod’ – a Russian city that acts as a staging ground for attacks on Ukraine that was shelled at the weekend.
It was also the scene of a gun attack on a barracks that saw at least 11 soldiers killed by two conscripts on Saturday.
One strike appeared to target Kyiv’s heating network, hitting an operations centre. Another slammed into a four-story residential building, ripping a large hole in it and collapsing at least three apartments on top of each other.
Three people were killed and 19 rescued from the rubble, four of them wounded.
Airstrikes then hit critical infrastructure in the Dnipro and Sumy regions – in the centre and north of Ukraine – killing ‘several’ people while leaving hundreds of villages without power, prime minister Denys Shmyhal said.
Suicide drones also struck the port of Mykolaiv late on Sunday night, setting sunflower oil storage tanks alight.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes were aimed at ‘terrorising the civilian population’ but vowed: ‘The enemy can attack our cities but it won’t be able to break us.’
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