A Russian Su-27 fighter jet crashed Tuesday in the Primorye territory in Russia's far east, killing one of the two-man crew, Air Force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik said. "Search parties and rescuers have advanced to the crash site. The accident has not caused damage to structures or casualties among the population," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Drik as saying. The aircraft crashed at 11:30 Moscow time (0730 GMT) while conducting a routine training flight near an airfield 12 km north of Ussuriisk. One crew member was killed while the other managed to eject and survived the crash, the spokesman said, adding that a commission has been set up to investigate the incident. The Su-27 Flanker and its variant, the Su-30 Flanker C, account for a major share of Russia's arms exports. The country's aircraft building corporation Sukhoi exported 50 of these aircraft in 2007. A Russian Su-27 fighter flying from St Petersburg to Kaliningrad, a Russian Baltic exclave surrounded by EU states, crashed on Sept. 15, 2005, on Lithuanian territory after a navigation system failure. A Ukrainian Air Force Su-27 crashed on July 27, 2002, during an aerobatics presentation at Sknyliv airfield in Ukraine, killing 85people and injuring over 100 spectators, according to Xinhua.
