The Ukrainian government said Sunday that “the world’s largest aircraft” has been destroyed at a strategically important airport outside Kyiv amid a Russian attack.
“This was the world’s largest aircraft, AN-225 ‘Mriya’ (‘Dream’ in Ukrainian),” Ukraine’s’ Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of the plane. “Russia may have destroyed our ‘Mriya. But they will never be able to destroy our dream of a strong, free and democratic European state. We shall prevail!”
This was the world’s largest aircraft, AN-225 ‘Mriya’ (‘Dream’ in Ukrainian). Russia may have destroyed our ‘Mriya’. But they will never be able to destroy our dream of a strong, free and democratic European state. We shall prevail! pic.twitter.com/TdnBFlj3N8
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) February 27, 2022
Celebrated as an engineering marvel, the Antonov An-225 is the only one of its kind. The enormous plane is equipped with three jet engines on each wing, supporting a maximum take-off weight of 600 metric tons, or 1.3 million pounds. By comparison, Lockheed Martin’s C-5M Super Galaxy, the largest cargo plane in service for the U.S. Air Force, has a maximum take-off weight of 840,000 pounds.
Rumors that the Mriya was damaged or destroyed began to emerge on Feb. 24, when a battle broke out over the control of the Ukrainian skies, as part of Russia’s full-scale military offensive against the Eastern European country in the name of a “special operation.” Shortly after bombing the Kyiv-Boryspil International Airport, the Russians extended the air battle to Hostomel-Antonov Airport, where Mriya was sheltered.
In the following days, conflicting claims about the fate of the Mriya proliferated on social media. Numerous reports claimed that the six-engine plane was destroyed in a hangar fire as the result of the fighting, while Dmytro Antonov, chief pilot at the airline company that runs Hostomel, said on Facebook that the Mriya remained “whole” even after its home airport fell under Russian control.
Hostomel, which serves primarily as a commercial cargo center, is located just 15 miles northwest from Kyiv. It has a long runway capable of landing of heavy-lift transport planes, which means Russia could use it to quickly move troops and supplies to Kyiv’s outskirts.
By Bill Pan
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