Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the commander of the country's air force on Friday, four days after an F-16 fighter jet Ukraine had received from the West was shot down in a Russian air strike.
The order dismissing Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschchuk was posted on the presidential website.
“We have to protect our people. We have to protect our personnel. We have to take care of all our soldiers,” Zelenskiy said in a speech minutes after the decree was released. The president said Ukraine needed to strengthen at the military command level.
The Air Force said U.S. experts were joining the Ukrainian investigation into the crash.
Meanwhile, Russian forces struck the northeastern city of Kharkiv with a powerful plane-launched glide bomb, killing five people, including a 14-year-old girl who was in a playground, and wounding 47, Kharkiv region governor Oleh Shniekhbov said.
According to the governor, the bombs struck five locations in the city, whose pre-war population was about 1.4 million.
One of the bombs struck a 12-storey apartment building, igniting it and trapping at least one person on an upper floor, and emergency services searching for survivors feared the building was at risk of collapsing.
Zelenskyy said the attack on Kharkiv was further evidence that Western restrictions on what the Ukrainian military can attack with weapons provided to it should be lifted.
“If our defense forces had the ability to destroy Russian aircraft at their bases, the attack on Kharkiv would not have taken place. We need a strong determination from our partners to prevent this terrorism,” Zelensky said.
The F-16 is one of the weapons that can be used to attack Russian bases behind the front lines.
Oleschuk said on Telegram that a “detailed analysis” was already being carried out into why the F-16 fighter jet crashed on Monday, the same day Russia launched a massive barrage of missiles and drones against Ukraine.
“We need to carefully understand what happened, what the circumstances are and who is responsible,” Oleszczuk wrote in the post.
The crash was the first reported loss of an F-16 fighter jet, which arrived in Ukraine late last month and is believed to be one of at least six delivered by European countries.
Military analysts say the plane is unlikely to turn the tide of the war, given Russia's vast air power and advanced air defenses, but Ukrainian officials have welcomed the supersonic jet, which can carry the latest weaponry used by NATO nations, as an opportunity to counter Russian air superiority.
Meanwhile, Russian forces are slowly but surely advancing into eastern Ukraine, while Ukrainian forces are consolidating their foothold in the Kursk border region in western Russia after a recent incursion.
Oleschuk was sharply critical of a deputy chairman of the Ukrainian parliament's defense committee who claimed the F-16 fighter jet was shot down by a Patriot air defense system, of which Ukraine has received an unspecified number of the U.S.-made systems.
Mariana Bezura made the claim, citing anonymous sources, and called for punishment for those responsible for the error.
Oleschuk accused Bezura of defaming the air force and discrediting U.S. arms manufacturers, and said he hoped Bezura would take legal action against his claims.
The Air Force did not directly deny that the F-16 was hit by a Patriot missile.
The Institute for the Study of War said it was expected that Ukraine would lose some of its Western-supplied military equipment in the fighting.
But the Washington-based think tank added that “the loss of any of Ukraine's already limited allocations of F-16s and trained pilots would have a “highly significant impact” on the country's ability to operate the F-16s “as part of an integrated air defence umbrella or in an air-to-ground support role.”
In other developments, European Union defence ministers agreed in Brussels to step up training programmes for the Ukrainian armed forces.
“Today ministers agreed to raise the target to 75,000, with a further 15,000 by the end of the year,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters after the meeting.
“The exercises will need to be shortened and adapted to Ukraine's training needs,” Borrell said, adding that the EU would set up a small “coordination and liaison centre” in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, to make the training more effective.
To date, 60,000 soldiers have completed the coalition's training programs outside Ukraine.
