Glorious Russia boasts of killing ‘first of Ukraine’s newly trained Ukrainian F-16 pilots’
Russia boasted of killing the first Ukrainian F-16 pilot in an attack on an air base.
The loss of Lt. Col. Oleksii Mes, 31, was confirmed in an obituary posted on social media by the mayor of Lutsk.
According to Ihor Polishchuk, he died “during a combat mission to protect the territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine.”
This comes after Russia earlier this week bombed Ukraine with 200 drones and missiles in “one of the largest bombings of the war”.
The mayor later deleted the post, possibly due to the sensitivity surrounding the F-16 program, but Ukrainian officials have not denied the deaths.
The loss of Lt. Col. Oleksii Mes (right), 31, was confirmed in an obituary posted on social media by the mayor of Lutsk
Mes, one of the first F-16 pilots, is believed to have been killed in a massive Russian combined missile and drone attack on August 26
Mes is pictured preparing for an incentive flight in an F-15D Eagle with the 144th Fighter Wing as part of the State Partnership Program in 2019
Pilots have been training in the West for two years to fly the multi-role F-16 fighter jets that have arrived in Ukraine in recent weeks.
Russia has offered a £124,000 reward to its armed forces for shooting down the first Western elite F-16 aircraft.
It appears that Mes is the first F-16 pilot to be killed in the war, but the circumstances are still unclear and other Ukrainian officials have not commented.
It is not known if there was any damage to his plane. If so, it was on the ground and not in the air, according to available data.
Earlier images showed Mes in NATO country Denmark, where he was training on the F-16s. He was previously a pilot of a MiG-29.
The mayor described him as deputy commander of a special operations support group and said: “Our sincere condolences to the family and friends. Eternal memory, honor and respect to the heroes!”
Russian sources claim he was killed on August 26 in an attack on a Ukrainian air base.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. and former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, center, with Ukrainian Lt. Col. Oleksii Mes, 31, right
Details of Russian combined missile and drone attack shown
Ukrainian Lt. Col. Oleksii Mes, 31, left, pictured during a speech on the US news channel CNN
On that day, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have attacked airfields in the Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk regions, but there were also reports of attacks on other regions.
The Kremlin’s official newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, reported that “one of the first Ukrainian F-16 pilots, Lieutenant Colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksii Mes, has died…
‘This happened on August 26, when Russian forces carried out a series of attacks on infrastructure targets of the Ukrainian armed forces in western Ukraine.
‘The exact airport where the pilot died is not mentioned.’
According to other reports, it is not known whether the attack occurred because he was in a command post or at the controls of his plane.