Cascading aircraft disasters across Russia mark the collapse of the air fleet - RFU News

Today, there are interesting updates from the Russian Federation.

Here, а series of aviation accidents far from the battlefield in Ukraine shows Russia’s air fleet is imploding at an unprecedented rate. The Russian sacrifice of expensive high-tech military to finance low-tech operations in Ukraine is now backfiring and leading to even greater and in many cases irreplaceable losses.

Russia’s aviation suffered another major blow with the crash of its last operational Antonov-22, a 50-year-old aircraft undergoing a post-repair test flight, which broke apart mid-air over the Ivanovo region, falling into a local water reservoir. Seven crew members were on board, and the Russian Ministry of Defense tried to frame the crash as a routine accident, yet even Russian state media quietly acknowledged the aircraft had exceeded any realistic airworthiness limits. Eyewitnesses reported that sections of the fuselage detached before impact, confirming structural fatigue long suspected in Russia’s aging transport fleet. Critically, this was the last active An-22, a platform Russia continued using simply because it lacked the capacity to replace it. The crash underscores a deeper problem: nearly four years of war, sanctions, and frantic military use have pushed a legacy fleet far past safe operating thresholds, as this incident is far from isolated, but part of a rapidly accelerating pattern of systemic failure.

The An-22 disaster came just one day after another grotesque aviation failure, this time inside a hangar. Two Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber pilots were killed instantly when their ejection seats suddenly activated, launching them into the ceiling of the hangar they were still in. Officially, it was labeled an accident, noted that the pilots had sustained injuries incompatible with life, but in Russia’s collapsing aviation environment, the line between accident, sabotage, and incompetence has become increasingly blurred. Magyar’s Birds, Ukraine’s well-known drone unit, openly hinted after the event that Russian pilots remain legitimate targets for Ukrainian intelligence, suggesting that such accidents may not always be accidental. Even if this case was simply the result of neglected maintenance, the psychological effect is the same: panic within the ranks and a growing fear that anything, from a seat to a sensor, can kill you without warning.

The catalogue of recent Russian aviation incidents shows a consistent pattern of basic failures. In the last months alone, a Su-35 crashed while landing at Kubinka after being scrambled to counter a Ukrainian drone attack, with the pilot surviving but in critical condition. A Mig-31 in the Lipetsk region went down after its landing gear malfunctioned mid-flight, with both pilots severely injured despite ejecting. A Su-30SM in Karelia failed to land entirely, killing both aviators. Importantly, these are not frontline shoot-downs but malfunctions during routine flights, with the Russian helicopter fleet suffering the same fate. A Ka-52 accident destroyed the helicopter along with killing its crew, while a far more damaging crash occurred in Dagestan when a Ka-226 carrying senior engineering specialists fell from the sky. Among the dead were the Kizlyar Electromechanical Plant’s chief engineer, chief instructor for construction, and the deputy director, specialists whose expertise cannot be replaced quickly, if at all. The Kizlyar facility produces critical avionics and control systems for Su and Mig fighter and fighter-bomber jets, meaning this single crash inflicted consequences far beyond the loss of an airframe, harming Russia's war efforts in Ukraine directly.

Small accidents were just the beginning, followed by big failures, and what we see now is the start of the total collapse, with the An-22 literally falling apart in the sky. Spare parts shortages, loss of qualified technicians, and reliance on cannibalized Soviet-era components have turned routine Russian operations into high-risk events. They are particularly dangerous not just because Russia is losing aircraft but because it is losing key specialists, the only people who know how to keep this old machinery running. Replacing pilots is difficult enough; replacing engineers with decades of knowledge about Soviet-era systems is far worse for an army, continuing to rely on old equipment.

Overall, taken together, these events show an air force approaching structural collapse. Combat losses over Ukraine already strain Russia’s fleet, but the surge of accidents deep in the rear exposes a different crisis: Russia can no longer maintain the aircraft it still has. As sanctions tighten and electronic components become harder to source, the frequency of such failures will only increase. The collapse will not be sudden but cumulative, aircraft by aircraft...