‘It feels like a real war’ As Russian military planes keep crashing nearby, a Siberian village lives in fear
On the night of April 2, 2025, Nina was sitting in her kitchen in a small Siberian village when the house suddenly shook and the lights went out, she told the independent outlet People of Baikal. When she ran outside, she saw a glow on the horizon and heard bangs in the distance. Soon after, her husband called with the news: yet another military plane had crashed nearby. The bomber, a Tu-22M3, was the second of its kind to go down in the area in less than a year. Now, villagers are increasingly afraid that the next one might land on their homes. Meduza shares a translation of People of Baikal’s reporting.
Nina, 43, has lived her entire life in the village of Buret, in Russia’s Irkutsk region. It’s where she raised her three children and now helps care for her grandson, Makar. Born in August 2023, Makar became the one-thousandth resident of the village.
Nina and her family bought their house 22 years ago. They have a large plot of land and a small farm with chickens, cows, and even horses. The only drawback: the village lies just a few miles from the Belaya military airfield.
“Those Tushkas [Tupolev aircraft] fly right over our heads. It’s just insane! It feels like a real war is starting,” Nina says.
The roar of the bombers is so loud it makes people’s ears pop and sends animals scattering. Locals have taken to calling the enormous aircraft “dragonflies.”
Meduza has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the very start, and we are committed to reporting objectively on a war we firmly oppose. Join Meduza in its mission to challenge the Kremlin’s censorship with the truth. Donate today.
Just before midnight on April 2, Nina was getting ready for bed after talking to her husband, Valery, on the phone. He works as a livestock breeder and was on the night shift. Moments after she hung up, the plane crashed.
“I don’t even know how to describe it,” she recalls. “I heard this strange, deafening noise and then the power went out — the whole house shook.”
Barefoot, she ran across the yard to the neighboring house where her children and grandson had been sleeping. They were already awake, hurriedly getting dressed — they thought the house might be on fire. Then the phone rang. It was Valery, telling her a plane had crashed. Nina and her son decided to head to the crash site, while her daughter and grandson stayed home.
“We just wanted to help,” she says. “Everyone in the village is close. We always come to each other’s aid when something happens.”
The plane had gone down just beyond the edge of the village, about 50 meters (55 yards) from the outermost homes. Nina could have run there, but the bomber had taken down a power line as it fell, leaving the entire village in darkness. So, she got in her car and drove.
‘It felt like we were in Ukraine’
When Nina arrived at the crash site, large pieces of the bomber were still burning. She could make out one of the turbines, but the rest of the aircraft had shattered across the field in small fragments. Other villagers had already begun to gather.
“It looked like someone had crumbled a loaf of bread, you know? That’s what the crash site looked like,” Nina says.
Locals — including Nina’s husband — immediately began searching for surviving crew members. Two of the pilots were found within half an hour in a nearby forest. A third managed to make his way out of the woods on his own, emerging near the village cemetery. His face was covered in blood.
“I ran up to him and asked, ‘How many of you are there? Where are the others?’” Nina recalls. “But he was in shock — he didn’t say a word. And when he found out the fourth pilot had died, he started crying.”
Nina didn’t see the body herself. Local boys who managed to get closer to the wreckage told her about it. The bomber had crashed into a muddy field. Anyone who tried to walk in sank up to their knees in muck. Nina believes it was nothing short of a miracle that the pilots managed to steer the plane away from the village and into the open field.
About 30 minutes later, by Nina’s count, emergency crews began to arrive — ambulances, firefighters, and traffic police. But the military was first on the scene. Nina remembers one man in uniform telling people not to film anything. Soon, the area was cordoned off, and the villagers began heading back home.
When Nina and her son returned, the house was still without power or Internet. By morning, they learned that two nearby villages had also been left in the dark.
Later that morning, Nina and her husband drove out to buy fuel for their generator. The crash site was swarming with soldiers. “It felt like we were in Ukraine,” she says. “It was terrifying — just horrible to look at.”
‘The fear is always there’
Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, living near a military airfield has become especially frightening for Nina. Every time the planes roar overhead, even baby Makar jolts in his stroller from the noise. The sound is so unsettling that the family is often afraid to take him outside.
Nina clearly remembers the first Tu-22M3 crash in August 2024. The plane had taken off from the Belaya airbase and went down in the village of Mikhaylovka — just 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from Buret.
“We saw it happen with our own eyes,” she says. “We were sitting outside having dinner when we spotted the plane flying over the Angara River and then veering into a field. It was already smoking, leaving a trail behind it.”
Nina, her husband, and some relatives jumped into their car and went out searching for the ejected pilots. They spent an hour and a half driving through the woods but never found them. To this day, Nina says, there’s still a crater at the crash site — and next to it, a Russian flag flapping in the wind.
Now, after two crashes in less than a year, residents of Buret are increasingly afraid that the next plane might fall directly on their homes. Nina says people are seriously considering appealing to the governor or starting a petition to demand the military airfield be moved farther away from the village.
“When we go to bed, we’re afraid we won’t wake up,” Nina admits. “God forbid, of course. But the fear is always there. They tell us the crashes are caused by technical failures. But ever since the start of the special military operation we’ve had doubts. Are they really just technical failures?”
Leaving Buret isn’t an option for most. Nina says buying a home anywhere else is simply unaffordable. “And where would we go anyway?” she says with a sigh. “We have our farm here, a big plot of land, two houses. The nature is good, we love it here. If only it weren’t for that airfield nearby…”
Sign up for The Beet
Underreported stories. Fresh perspectives. From Budapest to Bishkek.
Cover picture: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service / AP / Scanpix / LETA