A plane crashed during an operation against a Russian air defense system, the military announced on Thursday:
"Communication with one of the planes was lost when the plane flew towards a new target. Later, it became clear that the aircraft had crashed, and the pilot had died."
The first reports of the crash came from the American newspaper Wall Street Journal. The crash occurred a few weeks after the country received its first delivery of six planes.
According to American sources and Ukrainian reports, the fighter jet was not shot down by Russian forces, although the incident occurred during a massive Russian drone attack.
The Ukrainian military commented on the crash shortly after the media reports were published in the USA. Earlier in the week, the mayor of the city of Lutsk said that Ukrainian fighter pilot Oleksij Mes had died.
First Pilot
Mes was one of the first Ukrainian pilots to be trained to fly F-16 planes and has often participated in media. He has also visited the USA to influence Washington to send fighter jets to Ukraine, the newspaper writes.
The news that one of Ukraine's F-16 planes has been destroyed is a hard blow to Kiev, which has been pleading for months to gain access to the planes before US President Joe Biden finally gave European countries the green light to transfer the planes to Ukraine last year.
Kiev hopes that the advanced American fighter jets will give the country's forces an advantage on the battlefield, especially when it comes to shooting down incoming Russian rockets and drones.
Used in Battle
Earlier in the week, the fighter jets were used for the first time to shoot down Russian rockets, according to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyj.
At a press conference on August 4, Zelenskyj announced that the first delivery of a total of 80 promised F-16 planes had arrived in Ukraine. The Ukrainian air force did not provide any figures, but a high-ranking American official said that a total of six planes had arrived and that Ukraine has six pilots trained to fly them.
