Summary A Russian Tu-22M3 bomber crashed in Siberia, with reports indicating one crew member dead and three injured. The crash was attributed to technical malfunction, occurring far from the war zone in Ukraine. Russia's aviation losses include multiple Tu-22M3 bombers and other aircraft, some attributed to Ukraine's actions.
Russia lost another of its Tu-22M3 strategic bombers against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine . The supersonic sweep-wing bomber was filmed by locals falling out of the sky in a fireball and exploding upon impact just 100 meters from Highway R-255. Videos uploaded onto social media in the morning revealed the jet as a debris field strewn across the area.
Russia is now confirmed to have lost at least five strategic bombers since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber crashes in Siberia Early reporting suggests all of the crew managed to eject. However, one of the bomber's four crew died, while the other three survived and were in hospitals in varying states.
At the beginning of 2024, IISS estimated in its 2024 Military Balance that the Russian Air Force had 57 of them left in service, while the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence estimated Russia had 27 Backfires in operable condition. According to Russian authorities , the cause of the crash was a technical malfunction. The incident happened in the Cheremkhiv district of the Irkutsk region of Siberia.
This is thousands of miles away from the frontline and has been out of reach of the war so far (much further than even the farthest and deepest Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia ). The Tupolev Tu-22M3 is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing long-range strategic bomber and the Soviet answer to the United States B-1 Lancer bombers (perhaps something of a copy). While they can carry nuclear weapons, they were also used during the Full-Scale Russian Invasion of Ukraine to launch conventional missiles at Ukraine.
Russia appears to have suffered the first-ever combat 5th-gen fighter loss with a Su-57 damaged or destroyed on the ground by drones. Russia's growing list of high-profile aviation losses In April 2024, Ukraine apparently successfully shot down a Russian Tu-22M3 as it was preparing to attack Ukraine. It had likely assumed itself to be out of reach of Ukrainian air defense.
The British MoD later confirmed it was likely shot down by a modified Ukrainian S-200 missile (Russia attributed it to a technical malfunction). Russia has ascribed technical malfunctions and friendly fire shootings to a number of prominent aircraft losses most outside observers attribute to Ukraine. Earlier in the year, Russia lost two rare A50U Mainstay AWACS aircraft in separate incidents that it attributed to friendly fire.
Later, British and American military sources attributed them to successful Ukrainian shoot-downs (SAMbushes) . According to the open-source intelligence Oryx blog , Russia has now lost four Tu-22M3 bombers (three destroyed and one damaged) and one Tu-95 on the ground. It is possible that more bombers may have been damaged than have been confirmed, as some damage may not be visible from satellites, and sometimes Ukraine hits aircraft hangars.
The damage to the maintenance hangars is often very visible from satellite images, but it is often not possible to see if there are any aircraft inside the hangars..
