Ukrainian media agencies said on Monday that Russia's own forces shot down a $36 million Russian SU-34 bomber over Ukraine's eastern Luhansk area.
According to reports, the plane was shot down close to Alchevsk, a city in the Luhansk region, one of the front lines of the present conflict. At the moment, separatist fighters supported by Moscow are in control of Alchevsk.
Russians Shot Down One of Their Own Best Jets
The burned wreckage of a Russian SU-34 fighter-bomber appear to be in videos and pictures posted by the Ukrainian military's Strategic Command on the Telegram messaging platform on Monday. According to local news sources, the cameraman in the video claims that a Ukrainian plane was shot down; however, an inscription on the military aircraft indicates that it is a jet belonging to the Russian Air Force.
TSN and other Ukrainian media outlets reported that a Telegram message claiming that Russia's own air defense had unintentionally shot down the SU-34 jet had been making the rounds.
Per Newsweek, Russians first remarked on a video of the fallen SU-34 aircraft thinking that a Ukrainian plane had been shot down, according to the Ukrainian news source Glavred. After it was determined that the bomber was a Russian, the footage was apparently deleted.
The reports have not been addressed by Russian officials. According to state-run media in Russia, each SU-34 aircraft costs about $36 million. The British defense ministry said the fighter planes and the Russian air force have mainly underperformed during the conflict that President Vladimir Putin started on February 24.
SU-34 Fighter Bomber
Russian twin-engine, twin-seat, all-weather supersonic medium-range bomber with Soviet origins is the Sukhoi SU-34. Prior to joining the Russian Air Force in 2014, it made its first flight in 1990 with the Soviet Air Forces.
Currently under the control of separatist fighters supported by Moscow, Alchevsk has seen more Ukrainian assaults. The rebels claim that during the weekend, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) rockets that were supplied by Washington to Ukraine killed two people and caused significant damage to a bus depot and other facilities in the city.
The bus depot was attacked, according to the Ukrainian military, because they had information that it was being used to lodge Russian troops. According to Ukrainian officials, new HIMARS built in the US that they started receiving last month enable them to reach targets in the Russian-occupied Crimea and other regions. Crimea was invaded by Russia in 2014, Express reported.
The chief of staff to the president of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, released a video of a big explosion on Sunday, claiming it was another Russian armaments store in southern Ukraine that had been destroyed.
Russian weapons depots may be reached by HIMARS, which can land an artillery round on a target the size of a dining table from a distance of 60 miles. The Kremlin instructed its forces to prioritize destroying US weaponry in Ukraine, marking Moscow's first formal recognition of the disastrous effect long-range artillery weapons are having on Russia's military objectives.
According to Moscow, Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, visited soldiers engaged in combat in Donbas for the second time in three days last week and instructed the commander to "prioritize the destruction" of HIMARS, which is credited with destroying a number of Russian ammunition depots that were miles behind the front line.
It is believed that Shoigu's visit to Russian soldiers was done to raise spirits among the men engaged in the Donbass conflict. At an army headquarters on Saturday, the official presented medals to soldiers and gave them the go-ahead to resume combat.
While this is going on, Ukrainian military leaders have issued a warning that Russia is gearing up for the next phase of its offensive in the nation. They said that Putin's soldiers looked to be reorganizing forces in preparation for an assault on Sloviansk, a significant symbolic city controlled by Ukraine in the eastern Donetsk area. Russia is also bolstering its defensive positions throughout the seized territories in southern Ukraine, the UK's Ministry of Defense said.
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