The governor of the northern Murmansk region confirmed Monday that a Russian Navy general was killed in a plane crash in annexed Crimea last week.
All 29 people on board an Antonov An-26 military transport plane were killed when it crashed into a cliff near the port city of Sevastopol on March 31.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the aircraft was carrying out a routine flight and that there was no sign it had come under fire. Federal investigators launched a criminal probe into possible safety violations.
Murmansk region Governor Andrei Chibis, speaking at a gathering of regional officials on Monday morning, said Lieutenant General Alexander Otroshchenko, who headed the mixed aviation corps of the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet, had died in the plane crash.
According to the Interfax news agency, Chibis said he had met with Otroshchenko “a couple of days” before the air disaster.
BBC News Russian, which first reported the general’s death last week, estimates that Otroshchenko is at least the 14th Russian general to have died since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
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