Antonov Aircraft building shelled by Russian forces

Kyiv, Mar 14: The Antonov aircraft plant in Kyiv has been shelled by Russian forces, the Kyiv city administration said on Monday. Tweeting about the attack, the Ukrainian parliament said that the Russian occupiers also attacked a high-rise building along with the plant, killing at least two people.

 

 

 

Seven people were injured in the attack, while about 70 people were evacuated, according to the authorities.

The tweet, however, did not specify the number of people who were killed in the offensive launched at the aircraft plant. An aviation wonder and the world’s largest cargo aircraft, the Antonov An-225, was “destroyed” in an attack on its base at Hostomel/Gostomel airport in Ukraine in the early days of war.

 

 

 

Concern grew over the fate of the giant plane after Russian troops began moving into Ukraine, and there were reports of attacks on the airport and its vicinity around February 24, leading to aviation chatter on social media over the last 48 hours about damage, which was largely speculative and based on grainy images of the airport and its hangars.

 

 

Confirming the development in an E-mail from Kyiv, Ukraine, to The Hindu on Monday, the Commercial Director of Antonov Airlines, said, “Today the fact was confirmed that as a result of [the] attack and capture of Ukrainian civil Kyiv-Antonov airport (Gostomel) by Russian troops, the largest aircraft in the world, [the] An-225 Mriya, was damaged and burned down. The aircraft was at the home base in Ukraine for maintenance. The loss of this unique aircraft, which was the real piece of technical art, is a great loss not only for [the] Antonov Company and Ukraine, but for the entire aviation world.” No other details were shared. Known formally as the “Cossack”, its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operating code, the world knew the “super-heavy transport plane” better by its Ukrainian name, “Mriya”, or “the Dream”.