Putin’s Aviation Nightmare: Russia’s Air Force Is Eating Itself Alive
Inside Moscow’s mounting aviation disasters where legacy transports fall from the sky and cockpit safeguards become death traps.
It keeps happening.
Russia’s Air Force is losing aircraft and airmen not to Ukrainian missiles, not to drone swarms, but to the silent killer Moscow fears the most: its own collapsing aviation infrastructure.
A Giant Falls From the Sky
On December 9th, 2025, an Antonov An-22 “Antei,” the largest turboprop ever built, crashed in the Furmanovsky district of Russia’s Ivanovo Region. Seven crew members were aboard. For hours, their fate remained unclear as emergency crews fought their way to the wreckage.
The An-22 is not just another aircraft. It is a Cold War titan a four-engine, contra-rotating monster built to carry tanks, missiles, and entire motor rifle units across the Soviet empire. It first flew when Brezhnev was in power. And yet, in 2025, Russia was still flying it.
The aircraft had reportedly been slated for retirement in 2024, raising uncomfortable questions about whether it was still in service with the Aerospace Forces (VKS) or had been transferred to other security agencies. Either way, the crash confirmed later by the Russian Ministry of Defense is another stark example of the stress and risk piling up on Moscow’s aging fleet.
Death Inside a Shelter
Just 48 hours earlier, tragedy struck again this time not in the sky, but inside a sheltered bomber bay at a Russian airbase.
A parked aircraft. Engines off. Crew preparing for routine checks.
Then the impossible happened.
The bomber’s ejection system suddenly fired on the ground. The pilot and navigator- strapped in, trusting the very system meant to save their lives in an emergency… were killed instantly.
No explosion outside. No Ukrainian drone overhead.
Just a catastrophic mechanical betrayal.
Russian military blogger Fighterbomber, who is closely linked to the VKS, broke the news:
“The ejection system triggered on a plane standing in a shelter. The pilot and navigator sustained injuries incompatible with life.”
A state commission rushed to investigate. No names released. No explanations given. Only silence the kind that follows a disaster the Kremlin would rather bury.
The An-22 crash and the bomber ejection accident aren’t isolated events. They are symptoms of the same disease: a military aviation fleet being pushed far beyond its safe limits.
Russia’s handful of remaining An-22s are relics…. enormous, maintenance-hungry machines held together by replacement parts scavenged from decommissioned airframes. Keeping them operational in 2025 requires a level of care and supply chain stability that Russia no longer has.
A single mechanical oversight in an aircraft of that size is deadly.
Western air forces treat uncommanded ejection as almost impossible.
In Russia, it keeps happening.
- 2021: A Tu-22M3 bomber’s ejection system fired during maintenance, killing three crew members.
Every unintended ejection is a violent, explosive blast inside a sealed cockpit — a “rescue” system turned into a weapon.
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These are not just mechanical failures. They’re tragedies lived in real time.
A pilot trusts his seat to save him.
A navigator straps in, running through checklists he has done a thousand times.
A transport crew lifts off, confident in the machine beneath them.
And then the machine kills them.
Inside the Russian Air Force, a bitter truth is spreading: the hardware is aging, the maintenance crews are overstretched, and the war’s relentless tempo is consuming both faster than Moscow can repair or replace.
2025: A Year of Aviation Collapse
Russia’s VKS has been bleeding aircraft at an accelerating rate:
- March 24: Su-25 crashes during routine training in Primorye Krai-pilot survives.
- April 2, 2025: A Tupolev Tu-22M3 supersonic long-range bomber crashed in the Irkutsk Oblast during a non-combat flight, killing one of the four crew members
- June 13–15: Su-25 lost over Donetsk… cause unclear; pilot ejects.
- July 1, 2025: A Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber crashed during a training flight in the Nizhny Novgorod region following a suspected mechanical failure. The two crew members safely ejected.
- October 17, 2025: A Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jet, reportedly belonging to Russian Naval Aviation (part of VKS), crashed in Crimea after a fire broke out onboard during a mission to destroy drones. The two crew members ejected safely.
- November 13, 2025: A Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet crashed on a scheduled training flight in the Karelia region, killing the two-member crew.
- December 7: Bomber ejection seat fires on the ground — two dead.
- December 9: An-22 transport crashes in Ivanovo… fate of seven crew initially unknown.
Not from combat.
Not from Ukrainian air defenses.
But from the aircraft themselves.
Every lost transport, every downed bomber, every dead pilot erodes Russia’s ability to wage war. Heavy transports like the An-22 are lifelines hauling equipment across thousands of kilometers of territory. Bombers and tactical jets are pillars of nuclear deterrence and conventional strike capability.
But each year, the fleet grows older.
Each week, crews fly one more mission in aircraft that should have been retired a generation ago.
And now, with deaths occurring inside shelters and crashes happening after routine repairs, a grim question looms over the VKS:
How many more Russian airmen will die inside their own aircraft before Moscow admits its air force is falling apart?
Is this how a “superpower” maintains its skies with aircraft that kill their own crews?
Is it not a humiliation for a so-called superpower that its own aircraft are killing its pilots?
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