New change in the Ukrainian general staff. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday, August 30, the dismissal of the commander of the air force Mykola Oleshchchuk, the day after the news of the crash of an American-designed F-16 plane delivered to kyiv.
“I have decided to replace the commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram, after a decree to this effect was published on the presidential website.
While Volodymyr Zelensky did not explain the reasons for this decision, it comes the day after the announcement of the crash of an F-16 plane, a precious military equipment recently delivered by the West and which had been relentlessly demanded by kyiv for two years. According to the Ukrainian army, this crash – in which the pilot Oleksiï Mes, trained in the United States, was killed – took place during a massive attack by Russian missiles and drones carried out on Monday. Little information has been provided on this episode by the Ukrainian authorities.
Internal reviews
According to Ukrainian MP Mariana Bezugla, a member of the parliament’s Defense Committee, the F-16 was mistakenly shot down by a Patriot anti-aircraft system “due to poor coordination between units.” In a message on Telegram on Thursday, she criticized “the culture of lies” within the Ukrainian military command and the fact that “none of the generals have been punished” and that “General Oleshchuk remains in office.”
On Friday, she added that this was “at least the third time” that a Ukrainian plane had been mistakenly shot down by Ukrainian air defenses. “The two previous incidents, which did not involve F-16s, were officially blamed on the Russians,” she charged.
Mykola Oleshchchuk had promised on Facebook on Friday before his dismissal to “discover the causes of the air disaster” with the F-16, assuring that he “hide nothing”. He accused Mariana Bezugla of wanting to “discredit senior military officials” and the United States, designers of the F-16 and Patriot systems supplied to kyiv.