Video shows Russian fighter jet crashing after takeoff in Crimea
Shocking video shows what appears to be a Russian warplane crashing and bursting into a fireball immediately after taking off from Crimea — as the Kremlin’s harried forces continued losing ground to Ukraine’s lightning counter-offensive.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense shared the clip on Twitter on Monday, writing in the accompanying post: “Sunday morning in Crimea. Another Su-25 is down. Incomplete at all levels.
“Weapons in the hands of the russians [sic] are the danger, first of all, to themselves.”
The 39-second recording, which has been viewed more than 188,000 times, opens on a pair of fighter jets taking off side by side from a field.
Seconds later, as the jet on the right attempts to make a sharp left-hand turn, it drops out of the sky and explodes on impact, sending flames and clouds of thick black smoke shooting into the air.
“Oh, f–k!” an onlooker cries out in Russian off camera.
Each Su-25 jet costs an estimated $11 million to manufacture. The fighter jets have been in use since 1976 by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian militaries, and were deployed during wars in Afghanistan and Syria.
The cause of the crash in Crimea is unknown at this time, and it is unclear whether the pilot of the doomed aircraft managed to eject from the cockpit before impact.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense claimed that the Kremlin’s military lost about 245 jets between Feb. 24 and Sept. 13, but that number could not be independently verified.
The crash in Crimea, which has been under Russian occupation since 2014, comes as Ukraine’s forces continued their blitz counter-offensive, which has seen some 2,400 square miles of territory in the east and south reclaimed from the enemy, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Monday.
