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September 1, 2024 - 8:00am
On Friday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced his decision to replace the commander of the country’s air forces, Lt Gen Mykola Oleshchuk. Lt Gen Anatolii Kryvonozhko has been appointed interim commander and, while Zelensky did not provide any explanation for the change, he stressed his responsibility to ‘take care of all our warriors’.
Unfortunately, not all of Ukraine’s warriors have been protected of late — Oleshchuk’s sacking comes after one of the country’s American-made F-16 fighter jets crashed on Monday, killing pilot Col Oleksiy Mes. It would be easy, at first glance, to blame Russia for the loss — the Ukrainian General Staff reported on Thursday that the plane came down while approaching a Russian target on a day when Moscow had launched over 200 missiles and drones. For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defence has previously proudly reported a local company offering a cash prize to the first to down an F-16.
However, it appears that someone in Ukraine may in fact be eligible to collect Moscow’s money. Hours before Oleshchuk’s dismissal, Ukrainian MP and member of the parliamentary defense and intelligence committee Mariana Bezuhla alleged that he had covered up an incident of ‘friendly fire’ and that the jet had been downed by Ukraine’s own US-made Patriot air defense system. She further claimed this was ‘at least the third time when our plane with a pilot was shot down by its own air defense’, as ‘two previous incidents that did not involve the F-16 were officially blamed on the Russians’.
An investigation has been launched into the incident, but Bezuhla is not the only one already alleging that friendly fire may be the cause — a source in Ukraine’s Air Force told VOA that explanations under consideration include ‘friendly fire from our own air defense, a technical malfunction and pilot error’, while Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh admitted seeing reports that the plane had been downed by Ukraine’s own Patriot missiles.
The incident is concerning not just for Ukraine but for the Western allies supplying those F-16 jets for which Kyiv lobbied so intensively in a bid to tackle Moscow’s air superiority. Zelensky announced on 4 August that the first of 80 F-16s promised by the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Norway had arrived, while an American official told the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine had six F-16s and six trained Ukrainian pilots.
Yet, training has been beset by problems. In May, Kyiv’s officials complained of facilities in the US, Denmark and Romania not offering enough spots for Ukrainian pilots and a former US defense official claimed that, at the current rate of progress, Ukraine will only have a full squadron of prepared pilots at the end of 2025. F-16s differ vastly from the Soviet-era MiG-29s that Ukrainian pilots are used to and require higher levels of maintenance, yet the US government has refused to dispatch civilian contractors to Ukraine to help maintain the jets.
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