Ukrainian Lawmaker: “First F-16 Fighter LOST due to FRIENDLY FIRE”. Former Ukrainian President: “Kiev Failure in Kursk but in Donbass too”
by Carlo Domenico Cristofori
A US-made F-16 fighter jet, handed over to Ukraine earlier this year, was downed by a Ukrainian Patriot air defense system in a friendly fire incident, Ukrainian lawmaker Maryana Bezuglaya said, as reported bu Russian News Agency TASS (sources below).
The first news about the arrival in Ukraine of a first batch of F-16 A/B combat aircraft (upgraded to the AM/BM standard 20 years ago) was released on July 31 by the Bloomberg news agency.
The origin of the first F-16s supplied to Kiev has not been clarified but it is known that the NATO member countries that have made available the aircraft of this type in service for about 40 years and in the process of being replaced by the F-35A are Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway.
“According to my information, the F-16 of the Ukrainian pilot Alexey ‘Moonfish’ Mes was shot down by the US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missile system due to a lack of coordination between the [military] units,” she wrote on Telegram.
The first Ukrainian F-16s were seen flying over the western regions, in particular over the Lvov region near the Polish border, then on August 5 over the port area of Odessa.
Ukrainian Air Force Criticed for falsely describing the incident as “a crash.”
The lawmaker criticized the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for falsely describing the incident as “a crash.”
“The culture of lies in the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as in other higher military headquarters, leads to the fact that the system of managing military decisions does not improve on the basis of truthful, consistently collected analytics, but deteriorates and even collapses, as is happening in the other directions,” she wrote.
In her words, none of the generals was punished over the incident that led to the loss of both the aircraft and its pilot.
Italian, US, Ukrainian reporters on Russian Wanted List for illegally crossing border into Kursk
Earlier, an unidentified US official told the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine had lost a donated F-16 fighter jet in the first such case. According to the official, the jet was not shot down, and the crash was likely due to pilot error. Later, the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed the death of a Ukrainian F-16 pilot, Alexey Mes. The man was trained to fly F-16, according to CNN. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the pilot was killed in an aerial fight, when his plane crashed on August 26.
Ukraine confirms loss of first F-16
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, meanwhile, confirmed on Tuesday that the jets had seen action during a massive Russian missile attack the day before.“Contact was lost with one of the planes as it followed a target. As it turned out, the plane crashed and the pilot died,”
the General Staff said in a statement on Thursday evening.
The Defense Ministry in Kiev has established a special commission to investigate the incident. A source within the Ukrainian Air Force told Voice of America that among the options currently being examined are pilot error, technical malfunction, and “friendly fire” from Ukrainian air defenses.
Ex-Ukrainian president urges focus on Donbass, not Kursk
Kiev should urgently reinforce the frontline in the Donbass, which lacks both fortifications and supplies, former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko has said. Poroshenko, who was president from June 2014 to May 2019, visited the town of Pokrovsk on Thursday with a shipment of drones for Ukrainian army units stationed there.
“Of course, Kursk is very important. Of course, other directions are very important. But I can say that the fate of these months is being decided in Pokrovsk today,” Poroshenko said. “And everything depends on whether our military will be supplied or not.”
Poroshenko criticized both Kiev and the local authorities for failing to build trenches and obstacles. Russians must be stopped “tens of kilometers from Pokrovsk,” the former insisted, with the help of fortifications “which have not been built.”
Ukraine’s top general admits key Kursk failure
The Ukrainian military’s Kursk Region incursion was a high-stakes gambit aimed at forcing Russia to divert troops from a key sector of the front line, but Moscow didn’t take the bait, Ukraine’s top commander has admitted.
“One of the tasks of conducting an offensive operation in the Kursk direction was to divert significant enemy forces from other directions, first and foremost the Pokrovsk and Kurakhovsk directions,” Colonel General Aleksandr Syrsky said at a press conference in Kiev on Tuesday.
“Of course, the enemy understands this, so it continues to focus its main efforts on the Pokrovsk direction, where its most combat-ready units are concentrated,” he continued.
“Putin has chosen Response to US-Ukraine’s incursion”. US Russian Ambassador said
“The enemy is trying to withdraw units from other directions, while in the Pokrovsk direction, on the contrary, it is increasing its efforts,” Syrsky claimed, describing the situation in Pokrovsk and Kurakhovsk as “quite difficult” for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Russia was ready for talks with Ukraine before reckless move in Kursk Region, Lavrov says
Russia’s readiness for peace talks with Ukraine was beyond doubt, but it was wrecked by Kiev’s reckless move in the Kursk Region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a news conference following talks with Senegalese Foreign Minister Yassine Fall.
“We always remember that President [of Russia President Vladimir] Putin made the latest peace proposal in June, after all previous initiatives and agreements were ruined and sabotaged by the Kiev regime and its Western backers. Our readiness for talks was beyond anyone’s doubt, although, of course, after the reckless move in the Kursk Region, any discussion of this subject is no longer relevant,” he said.
Ukrainian forces started a major attack on the Kursk Region on August 6. Missile attack warnings have been issued repeatedly in the region since then, and the government declared a federal-level emergency there. Residents are being evacuated from areas along the border to safer places. According to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, a total of 197 temporary accommodation centers are operating in 28 Russian regions, housing more than 11,500 people, including more than 3,500 children.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukraine has lost up to 7,000 servicemen and 74 tanks since the start of fighting in the Kursk area. The operation to destroy Ukrainian formations is ongoing.
Hungarian foreign minister opposes any Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russia
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto warned against any Ukrainian long-range strikes into Russia and further escalation of the conflict.
“If long-range attacks hit the territory of Russia, then the risk of escalation will only increase,” he said on Facebook (banned in Russia as it’s owned by Meta Corporation, which is designated as an extremist organization in Russia). “We don’t want this.”
The minister urged an end to the “insanity” and called against new supplies of weapons to Ukraine. He said that at Thursday’s informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels he would defend the policy of peace that was started by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
On July 1, Hungary assumed the presidency of the EU Council for six months. On July 5, Orban visited Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed possible ways to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and starting peace talks. Later, the prime minister traveled to Beijing, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Prior to his visit to Russia, Orban discussed the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev on July 2.
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