Newspapers across the continent have plenty to say about the weekend's air disasters in Ukraine and Russia - a crash at an air show in Lviv, and another one at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

In Ukraine, the Russian-language daily Segodnya devotes much of its front page to the Lviv air show crash which, it says, "threatens to become the most bloody tragedy ever witnessed first-hand in Ukraine."

"Air shock" is the headline, while the pictures - of the crash and a bloodied little boy - are repeated in many papers.

The opposition Vecherniye Vesti runs harrowing comments from spectators at the scene, including a soldier who saw his children mown down.

So much combined fatality cannot be solely the result of hazard and chance

ABC

The paper charges the organisers with negligence, and argues for a fundamental review of air display safety precautions.

The public, it says, should not have been allowed to stand so close to the action.

The Italian daily Corriere Della Sera shows the fighter plane engulfed in flames as it crashed onto the airfield, watched by a horrified crowd.

The pilot can be seen ejecting above the fireball.

Like other newspapers, the Paris daily Le Figaro notes that the crash set a new record, with at least 83 people dead.

"It is the deadliest accident ever to have occurred at an air show," the paper says.

Blame game

On the crash, Ukraine's Segodnya reports that a technical failure is the most likely culprit.

"The whole world will be troubled by this tragedy," it says.

An expert quoted in the Ukrainian paper says that the pilots are "more reliable than the plane".

Russian newspapers take the same line, with a raft of experts blaming the Su-27 fighter.

No place for lies on the part of the military

Vremya Novostey

Izvestiya quotes officials as saying that the cause was probably engine failure.

The paper goes on to criticise Ukraine's aircraft as "obsolete", noting that efforts to keep them flying do not always succeed.

However, it predicts that the disaster will be assigned to "the human factor".

Recalling an event shortly after 11 September in which a Ukrainian missile downed a Russian passenger flight from Israel, Kommersant says Ukraine's military is at fault.

It believes the problems do not only lie with "ordinary officers, but also the command structure".

The business daily adds that Ukrainian military reforms will take "many years... to reach even the level of the Russian army".

Vremya Novostey also looks at the woes of Kiev's armed forces.

It says that the pilots pushed the ageing plane too hard, adding that the crash "leaves no place for lies on the part of the military".

Whether it was caused by pilot error or equipment failure, the paper says that the accident shows that military reform is "an absolute must".

Bad show

Rossiyskaya Gazeta is more critical of the air show's organisers.

Whether at France's Le Bourget or Moscow's MAKS, the paper writes, all demonstration flights are planned to exclude the possibility of planes falling on the public.

The country with the second largest area in Europe is seen as a classic example of a failed transformation

Sueddeutsche Zeitung

Expanding on the Russian Government paper's headline - "The show should not continue" - Vienna's Der Standard takes a hard look at air shows in general.

It says their safety record is poor, even in countries where standards are high.

"There have been dozens of accidents at such events all over the world, and there will be dozens more if we don't put an end to the whole thing," the paper says.

Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung agrees that accidents can happen at air shows anywhere, recalling a 1988 accident at Ramstein in Germany in which about 70 spectators were killed.

"This is little consolation for the people of the Ukraine, nor can it take away their feeling that there is something fundamentally rotten in their state" the paper says.

"It never rains but it pours, the saying goes, but so much combined fatality cannot be solely the result of hazard and chance," concurs the Madrid daily ABC.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung adds that Ukraine's crumbling infrastructure is evident, particularly when it comes to mining accidents.

"The country with the second largest area in Europe is seen as a classic example of a failed transformation," it says.

Narrow escape

The Russian newspapers are less forthcoming about their domestic crash, but Kommersant points out that the suburbs of Moscow barely avoided a similar tragedy to the one in Lviv.

Tourists are increasingly afraid to fly

Tourism representative in Vedomosti

It reports on the crash of an empty passenger plane just after taking off from Moscow's main airport, noting how reliable Ilyushin-86s are.

The paper says that the casualties - 14 of the 16 crew - could have been 10 times greater had the plane landed on a nearby settlement.

The business daily Vedomosti reports that it is the first Il-86 to crash in over 20 years of commercial service.

The plane was returning to St Petersburg after a charter flight to the popular Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi and there are fears that the crash will hurt an already weak tourist trade.

A tourism spokeswoman told the paper that flights were down by 10%-15% this summer.

"Tourists are increasingly afraid to fly," she said.

The European press review is compiled by BBC Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early printed editions.