On Monday, 26 August, Ukraine lost one of its F-16 fighter jets during a massive missile and drone attack by the Russian Armed Forces. This was was reported by the WSJ cited a US official as saying this, Komersant ukrainskyi
reports.
Initial reports indicate that the aircraft was not shot down by Russian fire, although the incident occurred during a massive missile attack on Monday. Most likely, the crash was caused by pilot error, the newspaper writes.
The Ukrainian Air Force did not report on the crash or the pilot’s condition, the newspaper noted.
However, it should be noted that on Monday, the Lutsk City Council reported the death of military pilot Oleksiy Mes, who had previously participated in a programme to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s.
Later, however, some of the information related to the death of Oleksiy Mes was removed from Igor Polishchuk’s page. Only information about the death of Yuriy Krysiuk remained.
However, as Komersant ukrainskyi has learned from its own sources, the pilot, Oleksiy Mes, was indeed killed.
Ukrainian media also wrote that F-16s were involved in repelling the missile attack on Monday.
This information was also broadcast on domestic TV channels.
As a reminder, on 4 August, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the first of 80 promised Ukrainian aircrafts the first of the 80 F-16 fighter jets promised to the Ukrainian military had arrived in the country.