Three crew members on board a supersonic Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfire bomber died in an incident at the Shaikovka military airfield in the Kaluga region on Tuesday.
“An ejection system malfunctioned during planned ground preparation for a Tu-22M3 flight at an airfield in the Kaluga region,” the defence ministry said.
Three crew members received fatal injuries due to the “insufficient height to deploy parachutes,” the ministry added in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
A state commission has been sent to the site near the city of Kaluga, around 190 kilometres (120 miles) southwest of Moscow, to inspect the bomber and investigate the cause of the accident.
The Tu-22M3 is a Soviet-era supersonic, variable-sweep wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber developed by the Tupolev Design Bureau in the 1960s.