Chuhuiv air crash: how Kharkiv Oblast mourned its cadets
A look back at the training-plane disaster near Chuhuiv and its toll on a Kharkiv military university.
What did Kharkiv Oblast and the wider country still face on 29 September 2020, four days after a military training aircraft came down near Chuhuiv?
On 25 September 2020, an An-26Sh crashed on approach to landing during a training flight. As reported at the time, more than 20 people died, among them cadets of the Kharkiv Air Force University. Later tallies put the death toll at 26, with one person wounded. The aircraft, tail number 76, belonged to the 203rd Training Aviation Brigade. Of the 27 people on board, one survived, and the aircraft was destroyed.
Ukraine declared 26 September 2020 a day of mourning. That national gesture marked a loss that fell heavily on one institution: the university in Kharkiv that trains the country's military pilots, whose cadets made up a large share of those on board.
What the crash meant for the region
For Kharkiv Oblast, the disaster was local as well as national. The crash site lay near Chuhuiv, and the cadets belonged to a university based in the regional capital. The loss therefore reached families, classmates and instructors in the region in the days that followed.
By 29 September 2020, the mourning day had passed, and attention turned from the immediate shock to the aftermath of the accident. The central facts were already established: a training flight, an approach to landing, and a single survivor among those on board.
