Russian plane crash: ‘Four dead’ as military flight headed to Ukraine border ‘suffers engine failure’

Five people have been hospitalised with injuries, according to reports

The plane was travelling to the Ukraine border (Getty Images)

Four people were killed on early Friday after a Russian military cargo plane crashed in Moscow’s western city Ryazan.

The plane — an II-76 military cargo aircraft — crashed and caught fire while trying to make a landing the Russian city.

Five people were hospitalised with injuries, the state news agency RIA said.

The Interfax news agency separately quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying the plane had suffered an engine malfunction while on a training flight. The ministry gave no details of crew deaths.

The crash comes as fighting in the east of Ukraine intensifies (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

It comes just days after Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian Su-25 Frogfoot plane and the pilot was subsequently captured. According to British intelligence, the pilot has confessed to being a former Russian air force major who had taken employment as a Wagner military contractor and had flown several missions during the conflict.

Fighting in the east has intensified, with Lysychansk’s governor saying on Friday that Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian attack on the southern outskirts of Lysychansk, the last fully Ukrainian-controlled city in the region of Luhansk.

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