The crash of Antonov An-26 military aircraft near the airfield of Chuhuev late on Sept. 25 brought grief to the loved ones of as many as 26 servicemen onboard — pilots, instructors, and young cadets aged only 18-20.
For one of the heartbroken families, this was the second time it lost a loved one in an aircraft tragedy.
Oleksandr Skochkov, a Kharkiv National Air Force University cadet, was among those killed in a burning aircraft after it supposedly lost control of one of its engines and crashed just 2 kilometers away from a runway strip.
He was only 20.
Kharkiv Air Force University cadets some of whom were killed in the Antonov An-26 crash on Sept. 25, 2020. (Courtesy )
Skochkov grew up in a small village of Blahivka, which is located in the Russian-occupied part of Luhansk Oblast, less than 10 kilometers from the border with Russia.
His father Ihor Skochkov was an Air Force officer, serving as a flight navigator with Ukraine’s 25th Transport Aviation Brigade based in Melitopol.
In June 2014, during the hottest early months of Russia’s war in Donbas, three of the brigade’s Illishyn Il-76 transport aircraft were assigned a mission to redeploy a 25th Airborne Brigade task team from Dnipro to the Luhansk Airport, which was besieged by Russian-backed militants.
The company of paratroopers was supposed to reinforce the Ukrainian garrison at the half-ruined airport.
The three aircraft took off overnight into June 14, 2014.
The first Illishyn Il-76 landed successfully in the battlefield amid complete radio silence and with its lights turned off.
But when the second aircraft got prepared to touch the ground being at the altitude of 700 meters, two rockets went off into the sky from near the airstrip. The crew managed to fend one of them off by releasing false infrared targets. But the second rocket was fatal — the transporter broke into flames and crashed in a plain field splashing a monstrous blaze of the explosion in the dead of night.
The third aircraft managed to get away safely.
The 49 men on board, including 40 paratroopers and nine crew members, had no chances to survive.
At the time, this was Ukraine’s biggest military loss in the war. It caused a nationwide uproar, with angry crowds storming the Russian Embassy building in Kyiv. A Ukrainian official investigation later said the aircraft was downed with 9K83 Igla surface-to-air missiles by militants of the Wagner Group, the notorious Kremlin-sponsored mercenary army.
In 2017, the operation’s immediate commander General Viktor Nazarov was sentenced to seven years in prison for alleged deadly negligence that led to the tragedy. According to the Ukrainian court, the general neglected numerous intelligence reports of man-portable anti-aircraft weapons operated by the enemy near the Luhansk Airport. Besides, the general failed to implicate numerous safety measured required by military instructions. Years later, General Nazarov continues challenging the sentence in court.
Captain Ihor Skochkov served as a navigator with the fatal flight.
A portrait picture of Ihor Skochkov, a military pilot killed in the sky over the Luhansk Airport in June 2014. (Wikipedia )
His scorched body was identified with a DNA test, and Russian-backed militants did not allow to bury the pilot in his hometown in Luhansk Oblast. Instead, Ukrainian negotiators recovered his body along with others and buried him together with his brothers in arms in a collective grave in Melitopol some 40 days after the crash.
When Ihor Skochkov was killed in war, his son Oleksandr was 14.
Despite the tragedy, he decided to follow his father’s steps and enrolled in the Kharkiv aviation school to become a flight navigator.
On the fateful night of Sept. 25, Skochkov was one of the 20 third-year cadets who boarded a training flight to practice as Antonov An-26 crewmembers. Yet the flight crashed, killing all but one of the people on board.
Six years after his father’s death, Skochkov was killed in the air, too.
Now, the official inquiry in the tragic incident continues, with aviation experts starting to analyze the aircraft’s black box data on Sept. 28. On Sept. 29, the Kharkiv city authorities are expected to run a public mourning ceremony to commemorate the 26 airmen.
The risks assumed by those who dedicate their lives to the Air Force was also illustrated by the unique destiny of the tragedy’s only survivor, cadet Vyacheslav Zolochevskiy. On Sept. 27, Ukraine’s military said the only survivor was recovering slowly but steadily.
20-year-old Vyacheslav Zolochevskiy, a military aviation cadet and the only survivor of the Antonov An-26 crash in Chuhuiv, pictured in a military hospital in Kharkiv on Sept. 26, 2020. (ArmyInform)
According to early reports from Ukraine’s military, fragments of the crashing aircraft fuselage accidentally protected the student from the raging fire. Reports offer different versions of what happened next: Some say that he jumped out of the plane, others that he was thrown off.
According to a statement by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who met with Zolochevskiy on the day after the crash, the cadet told him that he tried to save one of his classmates, who was ablaze on the ground. The classmate made it to the hospital with Zolochevskiy — but only to die of injuries the following day.
Zolochevskiy’s father Vitaliy is also an airman, and survived at least three aviation incidents.
