Photos suggest second Su-30 damaged

TLDR

• OSINT Bees photos show a wing-damaged Su-30SM2 at Chernyakhovsk, which the group ties to the 21 October crash.¹²
• Russia's defence ministry confirmed one crash on 21 October; the photos come from unnamed airbase sources and are unverified.⁴¹
• Militarnyi identifies the jet as "89 Blue" from its serial number; a mid-air collision is only a theory.¹²

Photos published on 1 November show a Su-30SM2 with a badly damaged wing at the Baltic Fleet's Chernyakhovsk airbase in Kaliningrad. The OSINT group OSINT Bees says it was the second jet involved in the 21 October incident, which the Russian defence ministry described as one crash.¹²⁴

Why it matters: the claim rests on photos passed to an open-source group, not on an official account. The serial and tactical numbers visible in the images are what allow the aircraft to be matched to a specific airframe.¹

Driving the news:

• On 21 October the Russian defence ministry, via TASS, said a Su-30 crashed on a training flight in the Kaliningrad region, that the crew ejected and that the aircraft was flying without ammunition.⁴
• Russian media cited by AEROTIME placed the crash between the villages of Timofeevka and Zeleny Bor, and said both pilots were injured.⁴
• Militarnyi says OSINT Bees received the photos from its own sources at the Chernyakhovsk air base. Hamer Intel, which renders the group's name as OSINT-Bdzholy, says the same.¹²
• The images show serial number RF-33838 and tactical number "89 Blue", which Militarnyi uses to identify a Su-30SM2. It says two Su-30SM2s, "89 Blue" and "90 Blue", were delivered to naval aviation in November 2025.¹
• Militarnyi describes torn skin and a missing part of the outer wing section. Warspot says the left wing was damaged and the pilots managed to land.¹³

The big picture: Militarnyi suggests the crash may have followed a mid-air collision between the two jets during a joint demonstration manoeuvre, and Hamer Intel says the group sees a possible collision.¹² Hamer Intel adds that the cause is unconfirmed and that the photos imply a second fighter returned to base "if accurately linked to the same day and location".²

The other side: none of the sources carries a Russian statement about a second damaged aircraft. Separately, Defence24 reports a different Su-30SM loss on 21 October, in which two Russian Knights pilots died elsewhere in Russia, so reports of "two Su-30s" that day do not all refer to the Kaliningrad incident.⁵

Single-source note: the photos, their dating and their origin rest on OSINT Bees and its unnamed sources, relayed by Militarnyi, Hamer Intel (an aggregator) and Warspot, and none of the images was independently dated or geolocated here. Militarnyi's collision theory and its aircraft history are its own reading.