Russian Ministry of Defense Claims, Ukraine's F-16 aircraft dead

Moscow, April 13 (IANS). The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that his security forces had killed an US F-16 fighter plane operated by Ukraine. However, the location is not mentioned. This is the first time the Russian army has announced that it has destroyed the F-16, as some European countries began the delivery of the fourth generation fighter aircraft to Ukraine last year. According to the report of the local TV channel RT News, the ministry said without any further details in its daily briefing, “an F-16 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force was killed on air defense.” Earlier Saturday, the Ukrainian Air Force reported the lost of one of its F-16 fighter jets. After this, an inter-departmental commission was established to find out what the cause of the fall of the aircraft is. President Vladimir Jailonsky later confirmed that Ukrainian pilot Powel Ivanov was killed during the “F-16 Fighter Mission” and indicated that Russia had the role of killing it and said we would have a strong and accurate response. Another source said F-16 was killed by the Russian army. The source claims, “In general, the Russians fired three missiles on the plane. It was either a guided anti-aercraft rack of the S-400 soil-based system or the R-37 air-to-air rack.” The source also refused to accept friendly fire as the cause of the loss of Jet, claiming that the Ukrainian air defense was not active in that area. Earlier, the first plane was destroyed in August last year and the pilot was killed, but the report of the incident was never revealed in public. However, several media reports indicated that the plane was accidentally killed by the Ukrainian defense against aviation. Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway promised to deliver 80 F-16 to the then US President Joe Biden’s administration. However, most of them will take years to arrive. In 2024, Ukraine received about 18 aircraft. -Ians SCH/DSC shares this story tags