What did Ukraine's day of mourning mark?

What did Ukraine mark on 26 September 2020? It was a national day of mourning, declared after a training military aircraft crashed the previous evening near Chuhuiv in Kharkiv Oblast.

The plane, an An-26Sh, went down on 25 September 2020 while on approach to land during a training flight. As reported at the time, more than 20 people were killed, among them cadets of the Kharkiv Air Force University. Later tallies put the death toll at 26, with one other person wounded.

The aircraft and those on board

The aircraft was an An-26Sh military transport plane with tail number 76, belonging to the 203rd Training Aviation Brigade. There were 27 people on board, and one survived. The aircraft was destroyed.

Why the date matters

The crash involved a training flight, so many of the dead were young people in the course of their military education. That is why the day of mourning on 26 September carried particular weight: the loss fell on a single air force university and its cadets.

The declaration of mourning came within a day of the crash, showing how quickly the scale of the loss was recognised nationally. For readers outside Ukraine, the date stands as a marker of that loss, and of a country pausing to remember cadets who died while learning to fly.