A plane from London Heathrow with 311 people on board has been forced to make an emergency landing in hostile Russia this morning.
The Boeing 777-39L(ER) is understood to have suffered engine failure and requested landing at Nizhnevartovsk in Siberia.
Footage shows the Air China jet – bound for Beijing – landing in the remote city in the Russian autonomous region of Khanty-Mansi.
It is still unclear how many British citizens there are on board the Air China flight, but their families back home now face an agonising wait on their fate.
Their plight comes against the backdrop of the most volatile chapter in the relations between the UK and Russia since the Cold War.
The current Foreign Office travel advice is to avoid trips to the country at all cost amid Vladimri Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Metro has contacted the Foreign Office for a statement.
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