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IPFS News Link • Ukraine

Friendly Fire Fiasco: Ukrainian Army Shoots Down Its Own F16 Jet, Pilot Killed

• https://www.zerohedge.com, by Tyler Durden

"According to my information, the F-16 of the Ukrainian pilot Alexey 'Moonfish' Mes was shot down by the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system due to a lack of coordination between the [military] units," she wrote on Telegram.

The lawmaker criticized the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for falsely describing the incident as "a crash."

"The culture of lies in the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as in other higher military headquarters, leads to the fact that the system of managing military decisions does not improve on the basis of truthful, consistently collected analytics, but deteriorates and even collapses, as is happening in the other directions," she wrote.

In her words, none of the generals was punished over the incident that led to the loss of both the aircraft and its pilot.

Earlier, an unidentified US official told the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine had lost a donated F-16 fighter jet in the first such case. According to the official, the jet was not shot down, and the crash was likely due to pilot error. Later, the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed the death of a Ukrainian F-16 pilot, Alexey Mes. The man was trained to fly F-16, according to CNN. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the pilot was killed in an aerial fight, when his plane crashed on August 26.

US and Ukrainian officials have revealed to The Wall Street Journal that a F-16 fighter jet has crashed during combat in Ukraine's skies - a significant first - which comes just weeks after an initial batch of some one dozen of the American-made aircraft were transferred to Kiev's armed forces. 

"The pilot, Oleksiy Mes, died while helping to repel a massive Russian missile attack on Monday, the officials said," WSJ writes. "Initial reports indicate the jet wasn't shot down by enemy fire, U.S. officials said."


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