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Russian Su-34 Crashes – 3rd Military Aircraft to Come Down in 2025.
Russia’s aerospace forces lost their third aircraft this year after a Sukhoi Su-34 (NATO: Fullback) fighter-bomber came down during a training flight from the Savasleyka military airfield on Tuesday.
According to the Russian state news agencies TASS and Ria Novosti, the aircraft, which was not carrying any weaponry, crashed in a forested area close to the village of Velemeta in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
The media reports quoted a Russian Ministry of Defense spokesperson who said: “During the landing approach, the release system of one of the landing gears failed. The crew made several attempts to fix the malfunction in flight, but the situation did not change. On the command of the flight director, the crew brought the aircraft to a safe zone before ejecting.”
As a result of the pilots’ actions, although the aircraft was destroyed, there was no damage or casualties on the ground.
According to the Baza social media on Tuesday afternoon, the two-man crew ejected safely, with one, who was uninjured, recovered by a search and rescue team. The hunt for the second pilot is ongoing.
The twin-seat Su-34 is an upgraded version of the Soviet-era Su-27 (NATO: Flanker) air superiority fighter. The crash on Tuesday came after two other military aircraft that crashed on scheduled training flights.
On March 24, a Russian Su-25 (NATO: Frogfoot) ground attack aircraft crashed in the far eastern region of Primorsky Krai during an unarmed “scheduled training flight” as a result of the failure of both its engines, according to the Russian milblogger Fighterbomber. The pilot safely ejected over an uninhabited area.
On April 2, a Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3 (NATO: Backfire) strategic bomber, also carrying out a scheduled flight, crashed near the village of Buret in the Irkutsk region, killing one of the five-man crew with the others ejecting safely.
The Russian Defense Ministry put the crash down to an unspecified technical malfunction.
Despite claims that no damage had been caused, Russian social media published footage posted at the time showed flames and smoke at the crash site and said the aircraft had struck power lines, causing outages to homes and nearby facilities.