The world’s largest freight plane, the Antonov-225 Mriya, has been destroyed during a Russian attack on a critical airfield near Kyiv according to Ukrainian state arms maker Ukroboronprom.
“The Russian occupiers destroyed the flagship of Ukrainian aviation – the legendary An-225 Mriya. It happened at the Antonov airfield in Hostomel near Kyiv,” Ukroboronprom said on its Facebook page.
It went on to say that restoring the airliner would cost more than $3 billion and take a long time.
” Estimated calculations will cost more than $3 billion and more than 5 years. Our task is to make these costs covered by the Russian Federation, which caused deliberate damage to Ukrainian aviation and freight aviation sector. “
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, commented on the incident, saying Russia will never be able to ruin Ukraine’s aim of becoming a strong, free, and democratic European state.
“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! ” He wrote on Twitter.
At the time of the invasion of AN-225 “Driya” was under repair at the Gostomel airport, so it did not have time to fly out of Ukraine.