A Ukrainian service member walks in a front of an Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane, the world’s biggest aircraft, destroyed by Russian troops amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, at an airfield in Hostomel, Ukraine on April 2, 2022.Russia has failed in its efforts to take Ukraine’s capital, but the suburbs around Kyiv have been decimated in the assault.
Among the rubble: The remains of the massive Antonov AN-225 airplane — also called Mriya, or “dream” in Ukrainian — which had set a Guinness world record for being the largest aircraft by weight.
Ukrainian troops toured the plane’s charred remains Saturday at Hostomel airport on the outskirts of Kyiv — and positioned themselves at the airport’s entrance in a sign that they were in control, the Associated Press reported.
Russian forces had hoped to use that airfield in their assault on Kyiv, 20 miles to the southeast, and it was captured in the earliest days of the war.
The Russian military held this area for weeks until Ukrainian forces claimed it back.
Other planes left the airport when the war began. But the Mriya had been at the airport undergoing maintenance and could not fly out, according to Ukroboronpromm, the Ukrainian company overseeing it. The firm estimated it would take five years and 3 billion dollars to rebuild it — a cost it said Russia should bear.
The Antonov AN-225 was finished shortly before the former Soviet Union’s collapse and was said to be the world’s biggest. The cargo plane was originally built to transport a Soviet space shuttle. In 2009, it was recognized by Guinness World Records for airlifting the heaviest item of any plane: a power plant generator weighing 375,200 pounds.
