Russian fighter jet crashes into residential building on its own soil – 2nd time in a week

A Russian warplane slammed into a residential building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk on Sunday, killing both crew members, authorities said. It was the second time in less than a week that a fighter jet crashed into a residential area in Russia.

Irkutsk region governor Igor Kobzev said the Su-30 fighter jet crashed into a private two-storey building housing two families. He said there were no casualties on the ground as all five residents of the building were absent at the time of the crash.

He said residents would be offered temporary housing and compensation.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known and an official investigation has begun. On October 17, a Su-34 bomber crashed near an apartment building in the Sea of ​​Azov port in Yeysk and exploded in a giant ball of fire, killing 15 people and injuring 19 others. .

The crashes could reflect the growing pressure that fighting in Ukraine has placed on the Russian air force.

United Aircraft Corporation, a state-controlled conglomerate of Russian aircraft factories, said in a statement that the plane involved in Sunday’s incident crashed during a training flight before delivery to the ‘Air Force. The jet carried no weapons during the flight.

CCTV footage posted on Russian social media showed the fighter in a nearly vertical dive and then exploding. Other videos showed the building engulfed in flames and firefighters deployed to put out the blaze.

Sunday’s crash was the 11th reported crash of a non-combat Russian warplane since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine on February 24. Military experts noted that the number of Russian military flights rose sharply during the fighting, as did the number of accidents.

battle for the sky

Ukraine shot down 14 Russian « kamikaze » drones over Mykolaiv overnight, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram. The drones are designed to explode on impact and have hammered Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this month.

On Thursday, the US government claimed Iran had sent trainers and technical support personnel to Crimea to help Russia mount attacks using Iranian-made drones.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised that his army will improve its already good record of destroying missiles with the help of its partners.

Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to NATO, said Western countries needed to step up support for Ukraine’s air defenses.

« The first thing today, and it’s something we should have done months ago and I don’t know why we didn’t, is to provide Ukraine with much better air defenses than it currently has, » Volker told CBC News. Rosemary Barton live.

« Nothing can stop every drone, every missile from getting through, but we can reduce the percentage that actually gets through. And that would be point air defense systems that are very effective, cannons that are actually good against Iranian drones, and some longer range air defense systems as well. »

WATCH | Former US Ambassador to NATO calls for more air support for Ukraine:

Western allies must step up air aid to Ukraine to fight drone attacks, expert says

As Russia pivots its war effort from its struggling ground invasion to airstrikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, Kurt Volker, former US ambassador to NATO, says the West must provide much better defense support airline to Ukraine.

‘Dirty bomb’ claim dismissed

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu alleged on Sunday that Ukraine was planning a ‘provocation’ involving a ‘dirty bomb’ – a stark claim that was firmly rejected by Ukrainian and British officials amid rising tensions then that Moscow is trying to stem Ukrainian advances in the south.

A dirty bomb is a device that uses explosives to disperse radioactive waste. It does not have the devastating effect of a nuclear explosion, but it could expose large areas to radioactive contamination.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Shoigu made the allegation during phone calls with his counterparts in the United States, Britain, France and Turkey.

Russian authorities have repeatedly advanced allegations that Ukraine may detonate a dirty bomb in a false flag attack and blame Moscow. The Ukrainian authorities, in turn, accused the Kremlin of developing such a plan.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace strongly rejected Shoigu’s request during their appeal and warned Moscow against using it as a pretext for escalation, the British Ministry of Defense said.

Zelenskyy said the international community was unlikely to believe Shoigu’s claims and suggested that Moscow was preparing the ground for the deployment of a radioactive device on Ukrainian soil.

« If Russia calls and says Ukraine is supposed to prepare something, it only means one thing: Russia has already prepared everything, » Zelenskyy said in a televised address Sunday night.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country has no dirty bombs or plans to acquire any.

Russia targets civilian buildings and infrastructure

Under pressure in southern Ukraine, Russia fired missiles and drones into Ukrainian-held Mykolaiv on Sunday, destroying an apartment building in the shipbuilding town near the front.

The attack propelled shrapnel and debris into a square and nearby buildings where windows buckled and walls cracked. Cars were crushed under the rubble, Reuters found. No deaths have been reported.

Mykolaiv lies about 35 km northwest of the occupied Kherson front line, the southern region which is the target of a major offensive by Ukrainian forces to retake territory captured by Russia shortly after the invasion of February 24.

Ukraine’s advances in recent weeks around Kherson and in the northeast of the country have been met with an intensification of Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure, which destroyed around 40% of Ukraine’s electricity system before Winter.

The figure is a jump from earlier this week, when Zelenskyy said 30% of the country’s power plants had been destroyed since October 10.

More than a million people were without power, presidential adviser Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. A city official said the strikes could leave Kyiv without electricity or heating for days or weeks.

Moscow has admitted targeting energy infrastructure but denies targeting civilians.