Tass reported that communication with the plane was lost at about 18:00 local time (15:00 GMT) on Tuesday, and the wreckage was found following a search and rescue effort.
The An-26 is a Soviet-era aircraft mainly used in a military capacity to transport heavy cargo and smaller numbers of passengers over a short-to-medium distance. It is manufactured by the Ukrainian aerospace company Antonov.
The planes have been used since the late 1960s, but have been involved in several deadly crashes.
Twenty-six people, mostly cadets, were killed when a Ukrainian An-26 came down in Kharkiv in 2020. The following year, 28 people were killed in a crash in the Russian Far East and in 2022, one person was killed in a crash in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.
Fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces has been ongoing in Crimea since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion four years ago.
Ukrainian strikes have largely targeted Russian military bases in the peninsula, which borders the partly Russian-occupied Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly demanded Russia withdraw from Crimea as part of a ceasefire. In November, a US-backed peace plan proposed Kyiv would cede control of Crimea.