Three Ukrainian fighter pilots died in a plane crash, Ukraine said on Saturday. Among them was the heroic pilot Andriy Pilshchykov.
Ukraine, which is suffering from a shortage of pilots, reported a severe setback on Saturday.
Three fighter pilots were killed during military exercises when two L-39 planes collided in the northern part of Ukraine in the region of Žytomyr.
Majors died in the accident Vyacheslav Minka and Serhiy Prokazin and the captain Andriy Pilshchykov.
The Ukrainian Air Force called the loss “painful and irreplaceable.”
The cause of the collision that led to the death of the pilots is not yet known, but an investigation has been launched into the incident. So far, there is no indication that Russia had a hand in what happened.
Pilshchykov, known by the code name “Juice”, had risen to some kind of national hero status in Ukraine. The pilot, who gave interviews to several international media, defended Kiev in fierce air battles in the early stages of Russia’s major offensive.
for the BBC Pilshchykov previously spoke of the immense pressure he felt to protect the city’s civilians. In addition, he disclosed the tactics used by the Ukrainian Air Force to fight against more advanced Russian aircraft.
– In one-on-one air combat situations, our planes have little chance of winning, he said.
– So we pushed Russian planes into the sights of our air defense, and the air defense shot them down. But the Russians are improving their tactics, and we need more advanced machines.
Ukraine is also getting them. Denmark and the Netherlands said a week ago that they would give Ukraine its long-awaited F-16 fighter jets. There are up to 61 machines in total.
– You can’t even imagine how much Pilshchykov would have wanted to fly the F-16 fighter, Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat wrote a British newspaper on Facebook According to The Guardian.
– Now that the American planes are arriving, he can’t fly them.
Ihnat also praised Pilshchykov’s desire to develop Ukraine’s air force into a more westernized one and his active contact with the United States.
The deployment of fighters requires lengthy training in NATO countries. There are not many pilots like Pilshchykov who speak fluent English in Ukraine.
previously reported that only six of the 32 fighters who applied for training in Western countries in Ukraine had passed the English language requirement test.
On Thursday, the United States said it would start training Ukrainian pilots and offer them the language courses needed to operate the plane. However, the F-16 fighters still have a long way to go in support of Ukraine’s war effort.