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- Entrepreneur arranged for an ambulance after his wife fell ill in Thailand
A wealthy Russian couple is feared dead after their jet crashes in the mountains of Afghanistan, according to reports.
Entrepreneur Anatoly Yevshkova, 65, and his wife Anna Yevshkova, 64, were on board a Dassault Falcon 10 plane when it fell off radar near Badakhshan province in rural northeastern Afghanistan on Saturday.
Anna fell seriously ill during a luxurious holiday in Thailand and was flown back to Russia for treatment.
Her husband and business partner Anatoly was awarded a medal by President Vladimir Putin’s regional governor for his “brave” work in building the Rostov region’s economy.
After Anna developed a mysterious infection and required treatment on a ventilator, her husband chartered a medical evacuation plane to take her from a hospital in Pattaya to Moscow.
Her son Vitali, 41, was not allowed to ride in the small executive air ambulance as only one passenger was allowed.
He took a regular flight to Moscow and learned of the horrific crash after landing.
One of the other victims, Arkady Grachev, was reported to be the ex-husband of Ekaterina Agapova, the head of the company that owned the plane.
They are believed to be among the six passengers, including four crew members, who died on the ill-fated Dassault Falcon 10.
The chartered emergency flight departed from Thailand on Saturday and refueled in India, but the pilot reported engine and fuel problems while flying over Afghanistan, according to Russia’s Shot media.
The crew alerted air traffic control about the fuel problem at 7:05pm local time on Saturday as the plane was about to land in Tajikistan in an unscheduled landing.
One plane’s engine failed at 7:19 p.m., and the other disappeared from radar 10 minutes later at about 7:30 p.m. local time, 55 miles from Tajikistan’s Kulob airport.
The plane was flying from Gaya, India, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to Moscow’s Zhukovsky International Airport.
Telegram channel Aviaspotter identified the wealthy couple and the crew members Dmitry Belyakov, Arkady Grachev, Igor Sivorotkin and Pavel Popov, two of whom were paramedics.
According to the country’s Federal Air Transport Administration, the aircraft is registered in Russia. ATLETIK-GRUPP LLC and individuals based in Lyubertsy, Moscow Region.
“We don’t know anything yet, but right now we are trying to understand the situation and understand what happened,” company president Ekaterina Agapova said. No confirmed data yet.
Russian state and independent media highlighted footage purporting to show the crash scene.
The footage is said to show smoke billowing from the scene, which would have been in the dark at least 12 hours after the crash.
The crash is believed to be the first since a Russian airliner came under sanctions as a result of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions resulted in multiple emergency landings due to lack of spare parts and maintenance involving Western suppliers.
However, it is unclear whether sanctions have been imposed on air ambulances.
According to the report, this is the ninth accident involving a Russian aircraft since the beginning of the year, and the eighth to occur during a flight in the past nine days.
India’s civil aviation authority said the plane crash was not a scheduled passenger flight or an Indian chartered flight, and said “further details are awaited.”
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