The ministry did not say if the pilot survived, adding only that rescue helicopters had been dispatched to the site.

"A Su-24 plane crashed in the Volgograd region during a programmed training flight," Russian press agencies quoted the ministry as saying, adding that the plane was not carrying weapons and hit the ground in an uninhabited area.

The Russian military has seen several deadly crashes since the launch of the Ukraine offensive in February 2022.

In July, a pilot was killed in a training flight crash over the Azov Sea, not far from Ukraine, and in October 2022, 15 people were killed when an Su-34 slammed into a block of flats in the Russian town of Yeysk near Ukraine.