The Kremlin will bestow state awards on two pilots who made a successful emergency landing of a passenger plane with 233 people on board near Moscow on Thursday.

The Health Ministry said 23 people had suffered injuries but that nobody had been killed when the Ural Airlines Airbus 321 came down in a field southeast of Moscow after it struck a flock of gulls, disrupting its engines.

"We congratulate the hero pilots who saved people's lives," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.