A strategic bomber crashed in Russia

The bomber was on a routine flight, caught fire in mid-air and went down. According to Russian authorities, the cause was a technical malfunction. All four pilots ejected. One died, the others suffered injuries of varying severity.

Russia has already lost two similar aircraft this year. In mid-April, Ukraine's air defences shot down a Tu-22M3 in the Stavropol region as it was returning to the airfield after launching missiles at Ukraine. One of the pilots was killed.

The Tu-22M3 long-range supersonic bomber was adopted into service in 1989 and is the carrier of the Kh-22/X-32 missiles that Russia uses to strike Ukraine. These missiles have high speed, making it an extremely difficult target for Ukrainian air defences to intercept. Due to its low accuracy, the Kh-22 has hit civilian targets more than once - a house in Dnipro in January 2023 and a shopping mall in Kremenchuk in the summer of 2022. It was also used in the bombing of Mariupol in 2022, dropping three-tonne bombs on the city.

Due to sanctions, Russia is no longer able to build such aircraft