Antonov 12, a Ukrainian cargo plane carrying weapons from Serbia, crashed in northern Greece on Saturday night, leaving all eight Ukrainian crew members dead, Serbia’s Defence Minister Nebojša Stefanović confirmed on Sunday.
The aircraft that took off from the southern Serbian city of NIš airport crashed near the Greek city of Kavala.
Stefanović said that the aircraft had been carrying 11.5 tons of ammunition and mines produced by the Serbian military contracting industry to Bangladesh.
Stefanović told a news conference that the plane belonging to the Ukrainian Meridian LTD company, took off in Niš carrying a load of training mines produced by the Serbian outfit Valir for the defence ministry of Bangladesh and was scheduled to land in Dhaka after stopovers in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Ahmedabad in India.
“This aeroplane had all of the required licences. Everything was in line with international regulations,” Stefanović said, adding that media reports that the flight was transporting armaments from Serbia to Ukraine were untrue, describing the claims as malicious and false.
He stressed that Serbia would continue to export weaponry exclusively in line with international regulations, noting that last year the country had agreements to export arms to the tune of a little over $1 billion.
Mladen Bogdanović, the Valir company general manager, told Nova.rs that the plane was carrying the mines for the training of Bangladesh troops, whose delivery was arranged in 2021.
The authorities of Greece said that the pilot managed to inform them about a problem with one of the engines and that he attempted to make an emergency landing at Kavala airport in northern Greece.
Media reported that people living in a radius of two kilometres near the place of the crash were ordered to wear protective masks, and also that at least two Greek firefighters have been treated for inhaling toxic fumes.
