One jet, a Tupolev 134 carrying 35 passengers and seven to nine crew, crashed near the city of Tula, about 150 kilometers south of Moscow. The plane belonged to the Volga-Aviaexpress carrier and it said the plane was in good shape and its passengers had undergone all the necessary security checks.
Witnesses on the ground saw an explosion on board the plane just before it crashed. "Around 11pm, give or take five minutes, there was this strange noise in the sky, then this torn-up book fell onto our garage," a local man told NTV television, holding up the book with its tattered pages.
An Emergency Ministry spokeswoman said there were no survivors. The plane fell from 10,000 metres (30,000 feet). Up to 500 rescue workers and police have gone to the scene, officials said.
The other plane, a Tu-154 with 38 passengers and 8 crew on board crashed in Rostov Region, South Russia. The wreckage of this plane and the flight recorder were found early on Wednesday morning.
The major Russian air carrier Sibir, the owner of the plane has said that it had been in operation since 1982 and was in good condition.
Interfax has quoted a government source as saying that the crashed Tu-154 sent a hijack alarm before disappearing from radars. This, together with the almost simultaneous timing, points to the possibility that the accidents may be terrorist attacks.
"The fact that both planes took off from one airport and disappeared from radars around the same time may show it was a planned action," Interfax quoted an aviation source as saying. "In such a situation one cannot exclude a terrorist act."
The incidents came just days before a presidential election in Chechnya where Moscow has been battling separatist rebels for a decade. The rebels launched a major raid in the local capital Grozny last week and have promised more attacks.
Russian news agencies quoted officials as saying no foreigners were on either plane.
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