Did a Ukrainian F-16 shoot down a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber?

The recent and not exactly embarrassing loss of another jet and crew worth $42 million by the Russian Air Force in air combat in Ukraine is almost certain, but hard evidence supports reports that a Ukrainian pilot in Kiev flew the first F- 16 shootdowns of a Russian plane are pretty hard to find, a Kyiv Post fact check on the engagement revealed. The first report of the engagement appears to have appeared at 12:23 p.m. on Saturday, October 12, in a Telegram channel written by a long-time milblogger named VDV Za Chesnost’ I Spravedlivost. The full text of On the Shot’s Russian-language report read: “Urgent!!! Our Su-34 was shot down. The crew died. The aircraft was shot down about 50 km from the front line during a FAB (High Explosive Bomb) drop with a UMPK (Glide Bomb Kit) attached to the bomb. Our Su-34 was apparently shot down by an F-16 that was over enemy-held territory. There will soon be more such losses. NATO sent F-16s to hunt. Now fewer FABs will fly at the Ukrainians. As a result, our infantry losses will increase.”

The Sukhoi-34 (NATO reporting name: Fullback) is Russia’s most advanced fighter aircraft. In the fight against Ukraine, the aircraft most often performs missions in which it drops glide bombs fired beyond the reach of Ukrainian air defenses.

According to previous articles on the channel, the author VDV is a Russian paratrooper officer serving with Kremlin forces in southern Ukraine. By the standards of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the readership is modest at 12,400 followers. The channel began operating on July 18, 2023, relatively late for the major pro-Russian mibloggers, most of whom began creating content in the late 2010s.

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In stark contrast to the longer-established pro-Moscow platforms, some of whose authors appear openly in the Russian state media, the content published by VDV remained anonymous, but was also consistently critical of the Russian military leadership, especially General Mikhail Teplinskiy Commander of the Russian Armed Forces Southern Group. The VDV broadcaster calls for Teplinskiy’s dismissal almost daily for incompetence.

VDV’s report on the downing of a Russian Su-34 by a Ukrainian F-16 quickly went viral and worldwide, spreading across the oceans and onto mainstream news platforms within hours. Kyiv Post researchers found VDV’s story about the alleged shootdown quoted in news media in South America, China and in major publications on both sides of the Atlantic.

According to several sources, the Russian plane crashed east of the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on the eastern Donbass front. Images of ground debris, usually quickly made public after the destruction of a Russian fighter jet, were not visible on either Ukrainian or Russian military information platforms 60 hours after the VDV report.

A single video of a falling Su-34 that was circulated among some bloggers on Sunday turned out to be a replay of a shoot-down video from 2022.

Some Russian mibloggers have claimed that the VDV Telegram channel, supposedly a commentary and opinion from a patriotic Russian military member, is in fact a Ukrainian false flag operation spreading bad news about the Russian military on Russian-language social media. VDV channel managers had not responded to a Kyiv Post request for comment at the time of publishing this article.

The hugely popular Russian miblogger FighterBomber, a vehemently anti-Ukrainian Telegram contributor who is closely associated with and openly supports the Russian Air Force, confirmed in an October 13 post that the aircraft was lost in action.

Claims that an F-16 shot down the Su-34 were unfounded, he said, as the Ukrainian Air Force for political reasons kept the NATO standard aircraft far from the front line for fear of media and public backlash -16 is to be shot down. The VDV’s claims were fake news generated by Kiev, he told over 500,000 followers.

“Dear subscribers. The war is in its third year. Wars are fought not only on the battlefield, but also on the Internet. Both ours and others are fighting for your partially immature brain,” reads an angry Oct. 13 post. “Either they get in your ear, or they don’t tell you the whole truth, or they don’t tell you anything at all.” It’s different in all cases. Some people get paid to tell a straight lie.”

Both crew members died and the plane was a total loss, he said.

Major Ukrainian media outlets have cautiously covered the F-16 vs. Su-34 news story, with most pointing out that neither the Russian Defense Ministry nor Ukrainian officials have commented at all on the incident. There were frequent articles clearly attributing confirmation of the shootdown to major Western publications rather than a Ukrainian or Russian source. Virtually everyone quoted the VDV blog entry and described it as unconfirmed.

The Ukrainian Air Force had not responded to a Kyiv Post request for comment as of Monday afternoon. In the Russian Defense Ministry’s public information sources from Saturday to Monday, there was no mention anywhere of the loss of a Russian Air Force aircraft.

Russian information platform Voina S Feykami (Fake News War) claimed on Sunday that the VDV report linked a real crash of a Su-34 during training in the eastern Siberian region of Khabarovsk to an imaginary combat activity in eastern Ukraine.

VDV said its information was correct and pointed out that until mentioned by War With Fake News, Russian media had not admitted that the Russian Air Force had lost a Su-34 in a training crash in the Far East.

FighterBomber said possible causes for the Su-34 loss (location undisclosed) included maintenance, weather and pilot error – but Ukrainian military actions were not among them. He said that when the Su-34 crashed, its crew was “fighting” in combat missions.

An analysis by the Kyiv Post based on Russian reports about the location of the Su-34 crash and specifications of the F-16 used by the Ukrainian Air Force found that firing a long-range missile from airspace inside Ukraine was technically possible but far riskier than known missions , in which Kiev has used the aircraft in the past.

In order for a Ukrainian F-16 to track down and shoot down a Russian Su-34 about 50 kilometers behind the battle line, the Ukrainian aircraft would have had to be at an altitude that would almost certainly make it visible to Russian anti-aircraft radars, researchers at the Kyiv Post concluded that they are well within the attack range of Russian ground missiles.

In order to fire a shot at a Su-34 that was about to drop a glide bomb, the Ukrainian pilot would probably have had to fly a fairly predictable trajectory at an altitude easily visible to him, which was relatively easy for an anti-aircraft missile to intercept Russian air defense systems, for about a minute , these studies found.

The high risk of being shot down while trying to intercept a Russian fighter-bomber on the way to drop a glide bomb is one of the reasons why the few F-16s used by the Ukrainian Air Force have not been used in the past when attacking incoming Russian ones Planes were seen. According to news reports, Ukraine received six F-16s donated by Denmark in late July.

So far, the Ukrainian Air Force has acknowledged the loss of an F-16 in combat. On August 28, a fighter plane piloted by Oleksii Mes reportedly crashed and burned during a Russian missile and drone attack on civilian targets in deep northwestern Ukraine. An Air Force investigation into the incident is ongoing. Ukrainian news agencies have reported that Mes may have flown his plane into the wreckage of a drone he had just shot down.