MOSCOW: A Russian military plane crashed into the sea during a training exercise in Russia’s Far East region, leaving all 11 crew members missing and presumed dead, officials said today. The Tupolev Tu-142 plane disappeared from radar as it was coming to the end of a training mission on Friday over the Tatarski Strait that divides Russia’s Far East island of Sakhalin from the mainland, the defence ministry said. “Given the conditions under which the catastrophe took place, we can presume that all the crew aboard the Tu-142 were killed,” a source in the emergencies ministry told the RIA Novosti news agency. “But search operations will continue as long as there is the slightest hope of finding someone alive,” the official added. An emergencies ministry source in the Khabarovsk region in the Far East told RIA Novosti that in the early morning an object was found at a depth of 44 metres underwater “which appears to be the fuselage of the plane”.