A Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter/bomber crashed in North Ossetia, in the Caucasus, during a routine training flight due to a malfunction, killing the crew of two, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.

“In the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, in a mountainous area, a Su-34 aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces crashed during a training flight,” the Defense Ministry said, according to Russian news agencies.

“The aircraft crashed in a deserted area” and the “two members” of the crew were killed, the same source added. The accident “did not cause any damage to the ground”, added the ministry.

“Based on preliminary data, the cause of the plane’s crash was a technical malfunction,” said a spokesman for the ministry, according to the TASS news agency.

An investigation committee goes to the crash site to find out the exact causes of the accident.

North Ossetia, which neighbors Georgia in the mountainous region of the Caucasus, is located some 800 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.

On June 8, regional authorities announced that they had repelled three Ukrainian drone attacks against a military airport, the first there since the outbreak of war with the invasion of Russian armed forces into Ukrainian territory in February 2022.