A Tupolev Tu-154 of the Russian Defence Ministry crashed into the Black Sea shortly after taking off from Sochi International Airport, killing all 92 people on board.

The Tupolev Tu-154 is a three-engined, medium-range, narrow-body airliner designed in the mid-1960s and manufactured by Tupolev. A workhorse of Soviet and (subsequently) Russian airlines for several decades, it carried half of all passengers flown by Aeroflot and its subsidiaries, remaining the standard domestic-route airliner of Russia and former Soviet states until the mid-2000s. It was exported to 17 non-Russian airlines and used as a head-of-state transport by the air forces of several countries.

The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation is the governing body of the Russian Armed Forces. The president of Russia is the commander-in-chief of the forces and directs the activity of the ministry. The minister of defence exercises day-to-day administrative and operational authority over the forces. The General Staff of the Armed Forces executes the instructions and orders of the president and the defence minister.

On 25 December 2016, a Tupolev Tu-154 jetliner of the Russian Defence Ministry crashed into the Black Sea shortly after taking off from Sochi International Airport, Russia, while en route to Khmeimim Air Base, Syria, during the Russian military intervention in the war in Syria. All 92 passengers and crew on board, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble choir of the Russian Armed Forces, were killed. The aircraft had flown from Chkalovsky Airport and had landed at Sochi to refuel.