The sister of the flight engineer, Lyudmila Loginova, told RT about this.
She noted that Andrey wanted to fly since childhood, so he went to study his profession in Irkutsk.
After training, he was assigned to serve in Orenburg. There he met a girl with whom he started a family.
Loginova believes that all six Il-76 crew members are heroes because they took the burning aircraft away from the village.
Earlier, RT spoke with the daughter of Igor Sablinsky, the flight operator of the downed Il-76 plane.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the missiles that shot down the plane with captured Ukrainian Armed Forces military personnel were launched from Ukrainian territory.
The Investigative Committee reports that the anti-aircraft missile weapons were located in the village of Liptsy, Kharkov region.
On January 24, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that Ukrainian troops hit a Russian Il-76 military transport plane with captured Ukrainian Armed Forces military personnel over the Belgorod region using an anti-aircraft missile system.