The First Flight of an F-16 in Ukraine and the Collapse of a U.S. Air Force, Air Defense, and Air Force Systems

Russian air force and air defense systems are the reason military analysts say their arrival won’t be a big change in the war. But Ukrainian officials welcomed them as offering an opportunity to hit back at Russia’s air superiority.

The crash was the first reported loss of an F-16 in Ukraine. A number of the warplanes are believed to have been delivered.

NATO members Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway will give Ukraine more than 60 planes. That number is dwarfed by the Russian jet fighter fleet, which is around 10 times larger.

Authorities in the capital, Kyiv, said debris of destroyed drones fell in three districts of the city, causing minor damage to civilian infrastructure but no injuries.

Russian forces fired five missiles and 74 Shahed drones at Ukrainian targets, an air force statement said. Air defenses stopped two missiles and 60 drones, and 14 other drones presumably fell before reaching their target, it said.

The Ukrainian air force in a Facebook post identified the pilot as Col. Alexei “Moonfish” Mes, who “saved Ukrainians from deadly Russian missiles, unfortunately, at the cost of your own life.”

The F-16 war planes that Ukraine has received from its Western partners in order to help fight the invasion of Russia have crashed, said the Army General Staff. The pilot died.

The Ukrainian army general staff acknowledged Thursday that they were involved in strikes on oil depots deep inside Russia.

The Kharkiv Strike and the U.S.-Migranted Warplane Project in Ukraine: Why the United States Is Embedded

The Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev added that four Ukrainian aerial drones and three sea drones were destroyed “at a significant distance” from the peninsula’s shore.

The Kharkiv strike “wouldn’t have happened if our defense forces had the capability to destroy Russian military aviation at its bases. Zelenskyy said that we need strong decisions from our partners to stop the terror.

Ukrainian officials have recently become more vocal in their long-standing insistence that Western countries supporting their war effort should scrap restrictions on what Ukraine is allowed to target inside Russia with long-range weapons they have provided.

The F-16s can fly up to twice the speed of sound and have a maximum range of more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers). They can also fire modern weapons used by NATO countries.

The U.S. built warplanes to be sent to Ukraine were approved in August 2023 by President Joe Biden. After months of pressure from the US, that was done. Officials in the administration worried that the move could cause more trouble with the Kremlin.

Ukraine has until now been using Soviet-era warplanes, and its pilots underwent intense training on the F-16s in the West for months. The usual training period is three years.

Ukrainian air force commander dismissed after leading a Russian attack on an F-16 warplane and killed a child in the city of Kharkiv

Oleshchyk hoped Bezuhli would face legal consequences for defaming the air force and the U.S. arms manufacturers.

A 14-year old girl on a playground and six other people were killed and 47 others were wounded in a Russian attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv.

One bomb hit the 12-story apartment block and set it ablaze, trapping at least one person on the upper floor. Emergency crews were concerned that the structure could collapse.

In other developments, Ukrainian rockets hit the Russian city of Belgorod and its surroundings on late Friday, killing five people and injuring 37, said regional govenor Vyacheslav Gladkov. The region borders northern Ukraine ans comes under drone or artillery attacks almost daily.

Oleshchuh wrote about how to understand the circumstances and who was responsible for it in the post before he was dismissed.

Russian troops are making gradual headway in their march into eastern Ukraine while Ukrainian troops are holding out in western Russia after a recent incursion.

The EU foreign policy chief said the ministers agreed to increase the target by 15,000 by the end of the year.

“The training has to be shortened and adapted to the Ukrainian training needs,” Borrell said. He said that the EU would create a liaison cell in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv to make the training more effective.

The dismissal came on the same day that Oleshchuk directed scathing criticism at a lawmaker who is deputy head of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee for her claims that the F-16 was downed by a Patriot air-defense system. Ukraine has received an unspecified number of the U.S.-made systems.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired the commander of the country’s air force Friday, four days after an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from its Western partners crashed during a Russian bombardment and killed the pilot.