In China, a transport aircraft IL-76 with a Ukrainian crew on board crashed in the morning. It was operating a flight from the city of Taiyuan to Riga with two refueling stops in Urumqi and Baku. It was in the city of Urumqi that the IL-76 crashed 10 kilometers from the airfield immediately after takeoff. Seven pilots died, six of them are Ukrainian citizens. The preliminary cause of the accident is overloading under high temperature conditions.\n\nThe tragedy at the airport of the Chinese city of Urumqi occurred literally two minutes after the Il-76 rose into the sky. The transport aircraft fell ten kilometers from the runway without hitting any of the nearby residential buildings.\n\nFrom the impact with the ground, the aircraft caught fire, and all seven crew members burned. Beijing reported that the bodies of all seven pilots had already been recovered from the wreckage. The death of six Ukrainians is confirmed by the domestic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Markiyan Lubkivskyi, head of the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, stated: "On May 18 at 10:45 local time at the airport of the city of Urumqi, Xiongjiaqu, Uyghur Autonomous Region of the PRC, an Il-76 aircraft crashed, which was operating a flight on the route Taiyuan–Urumqi–Baku–Riga. According to information from the Chinese side, all crew members and passengers — that is, 6 people — were citizens of Ukraine, and unfortunately, they died. The circumstances of the accident — the exact list of victims is being clarified."\n\nThe surnames of all the deceased Ukrainians and one citizen of Azerbaijan are already known.\n\nCommander Volin Vyacheslav\n\n2nd pilot — Samoilov Viktor (according to other data, Valerii)\n\nnavigator — Kudriashov Serhii\n\nflight engineer — Busyhin Vasyl\n\nradio operator — Malyi Oleksandr\n\nsenior technician - Kuranda Vasyl\n\nflight operator - Dzhabarov Ali Rakhman Ohly\n\nAccording to preliminary data, the catastrophe was caused by excessive loading of the aircraft and extremely high air temperature — over 35 degrees.\n\nThe IL-76 is a transport aircraft not intended for carrying passengers. Over the past 8 years, eight vessels of this model have crashed.\n\nProduced during Soviet times, the aircraft currently operate flights all over the world.\n\nIn most of the Il aircraft built back in Soviet times, the technical service life has been exhausted and they do not receive proper technical maintenance. That is why accidents happen to them so often and people die.