Ukrainian F-16 pilot killed while shooting Russian missiles out of sky
A Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet has been shot down with its pilot killed in one of the largest Russian air strikes since the invasion.
The US-made warplane sustained critical damage while intercepting Russian missiles and drones during the heavy aerial bombardment overnight, the Ukrainian air force said.
Lt Cl Maksym Ustymenko, 31, flew the damaged jet away from a settlement but did not have time to eject before it crashed.
His was the third F-16 to be lost in the war since Putin's invasion began in February 2022.
The Air Force said on Telegram: 'The pilot used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. While shooting down the last one, his aircraft was damaged and began to lose altitude.'
The Russian attack targeted regions across Ukraine, including those far behind the front line to the country's west.
Russian forces fired 537 projectiles in total, including 447 Shahed-type drones and decoys, alongside 60 missiles, Kyiv's air force said on Telegram. Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, believed to have been electronically jammed.
Nato warplanes were also scrambled during the attack, with Poland placing its ground-based air defence systems in their 'highest state of readiness', its operational command confirmed.
'The steps taken are aimed at ensuring security in the areas bordering the threatened areas,' it said. The allied forces were stood down two hours later after the Russian air strike threat was deemed to be reduced.
The attacks follow Russian president Vladimir Putin's comments Friday that Moscow is ready for a fresh round of direct peace talks in Istanbul. Talks have hit an impasse after Putin rejected a US deal to end the fighting. Donald Trump admitted at a Nato summit on Wednesday that dealing with Putin has proved 'more difficult' than he'd thought.
Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine's air force, said the overnight onslaught was one of the largest Ukraine had faced since the invasion began in February 2022.
It was 'the most massive air strike', he said, with the missile attack lasting almost three hours and the drone assault reaching 10 hours in total.
Oleksandr Prokudin, the regional governor of Kherson, said one person was killed in a drone strike. A further six people were wounded in Cherkasy, including a child, officials reported.
Several regions were targeted in the assault, with parts of the city of Drohobych, Lviv, losing power after a drone attack caused a large-scale fire at an industrial facility.
Other facilities were also hit in the southern Ukrainian Mykolaiv and central Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials said, with a production site damaged in Zaporizhzhia.
The governor of Lviv, in the country's west, said the strike targeted critical infrastructure.
F-16s were first delivered to Ukraine in August 2024 after months of wrangling between the US and Western allies.
Russian soldiers were awarded almost $200,000 by oil giant Forse in May for shooting down one of the US-made warplanes.
The first confirmed F-16 loss was reported just 25 days after the jets' initial delivery.
In April, the Ukrainian air force reported it had lost an F-16 fourth generation fighter and its pilot during a combat mission that had taken place under 'extremely complicated conditions'.
The Russian defence ministry later said its air defences were responsible for shooting down the warplane, which had been located deep inside Ukrainian-controlled airspace.
This latest aerial strike comes as Russia's summer offensive in Ukraine appears to be faltering, just weeks after it first began.
Despite a record number of attacks across multiple fronts, data analysis by The Telegraph found the sheer volume of assaults by Moscow had not translated into meaningful breakthroughs on the battlefield.
The offensive, launched in May but planned over the winter, stretches from the northern border regions of Sumy and Khrakic to the front lines in Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk.
Putin said on Friday that Moscow was prepared to enter into a fresh round of peace talks in Istanbul.
His comments came after two rounds of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul had shown little signs of reaching a settlement, despite the international peace efforts being brokered by the US.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, signed a decree on the country's withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker said on Sunday.
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