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A military transport plane carrying students from an aviation school crashed in northeastern Ukraine, killing at least 22 people on board, authorities said.
The Antonov An-26 had been trying to land during a training exercise when it burst into flames just a mile from a military airport on Friday night.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces, Ruslan Khomchak, said that, in addition to the deaths, at least two people were seriously injured.
A total of 27 people were traveling on the plane, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.
Most of those on board were students from the Kharkiv Air Force University, which is run by the country’s Defense Ministry.
Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko posted a video showing the plane on fire and smoke rising upward.
Other images showed rescuers inspecting the wreckage near Chuhuiv, about 250 miles east of Ukraine’s capital Kiev.
The cause of the accident is under investigation, but a pilot reported the failure of one of the plane’s two engines, according to Oleksiy Kucher, governor of the Kharkiv region.
He told Interfax Ukraine that this would not have been a critical situation for an experienced pilot.
Some of those on board managed to jump out of the plane while flying low, he added, something confirmed by a witness on the Ukraine 24 news channel.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will visit the site on Saturday.
