KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine’s air force claimed Friday that it shot down a Russian strategic bomber, but authorities in Moscow said the plane malfunctioned after a combat mission and crashed in a sparsely populated area.
Neither claim could be independently verified. Previous claims by Ukraine that it shot down a Russian fighter jet during the more than two-year war have been met with silence or denial by Moscow.
Meanwhile, a Russian missile struck a city in central Ukraine’s Dnipro region, killing eight people, including an eight-year-old girl, and injuring 25 others, local officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy repeated his almost daily appeals to Kiev officials to expand Western air defense systems, again drawing parallels with Israel’s blunting of recent attacks on Iran.
“This has been proven in the skies of the Middle East and should work in Europe as well,” he wrote on social platform X, saying it could thwart missile and drone attacks.
The Russian air force is much stronger than the Ukrainian air force, but advanced missile systems provided by Kiev’s Western partners pose a major threat to Russian aviation as Kremlin forces slowly advance along some 1,000 kilometers (620 kilometers). It becomes. Miles), the front line was a fierce war of attrition. Ukrainian officials said they expected a major Russian attack in the summer.
Ukraine announced that its air force and military intelligence helped shoot down a Tu-22M3 bomber with anti-aircraft missiles. Russia typically uses the bomber to launch Kh-22 cruise missiles from within its airspace at targets in Ukraine. This plane can also carry nuclear warheads.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the fighter jet crashed in a “no-man’s land” south of Stavropol, hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
According to the ministry, three crew members were rescued after ejecting from the aircraft, and a search is underway for a fourth person. However, Stavropol Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said one of the rescued pilots had died.
On Christmas Eve, Ukraine claimed to have shot down two Russian fighter jets. In January, Ukraine’s air force announced that it had shot down a Russian early warning and control aircraft and a key command aircraft that relayed information to ground forces, in a significant blow to Kremlin forces. The following month, Ukraine announced it had shot down another early warning and control aircraft.
Also in January, Moscow accused Kiev of shooting down a Russian military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners en route to a prisoner exchange.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russian forces carried out a combined airstrike during the night using 22 missiles of various types and 14 Shahed drones.
It said all 14 Shahid drones and 15 missiles were intercepted.
