Ukrainian media agencies said on Monday that Russia’s own forces shot down a $36 million Russian Su-34 bomber over Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk area.
According to reports, the jet was shot down close to Alchevsk, a city in the Luhansk region, one of the front lines of the ongoing conflict. At the moment, separatist fighters supported by Moscow are in charge of Alchevsk.
The charred remnants of a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber appear to be in videos and pictures sent by the Strategic Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Monday to the Telegram messaging service.
Although the cameraman in the video claims that a Ukrainian plane was shot down, local news sources reported that an inscription on the military aircraft indicates that it is a jet belonging to the Russian Air Force.
According to TSN and other Ukrainian media outlets, there was a Telegram message circulating that claimed Russia’s own air forces had unintentionally shot down the Su-34 aircraft.
A Telegram user called Ruslan reportedly wrote: “The jet is ours unfortunately. Sometimes it happens. I heard the info from a friend, I thought bulls**t, but it was confirmed.”
According to the Ukrainian news outlet dialog.ua, “Russian invaders from the air defense shot down their own jet, which was flying in the sky over Alchevsk.” The incident might have happened on Sunday when Ukraine’s armed forces performed a targeted attack on military stores in the occupied city.
Russian commenters first thought that a Ukrainian plane had been shot down after seeing a video of the crashed Su-34 aircraft on local Telegram accounts, as per the Ukrainian news outlet Glavred. Apparently, after it was determined that the bomber was a Russian, the footage was deleted.
The Russian government has not responded to the reports. The claims have not been independently verified by Newsweek, which has contacted the Russian foreign ministry for comment.
The Su-34 is reported to cost about $36 million per unit, according to state-run media in Russia. The British defence ministry claims that during the conflict, which Russian President Vladimir Putin started on February 24, the fighter jets and the Russian air force have generally underperformed.
Near a different incident that occurred in the Ukrainian city of Alchevsk last month, a video that was making the rounds on social media purported to capture the moment a Russian air defense system failed and the missile appeared to turn back towards the launcher.
On June 24, local media reports stated that the missile’s trajectory appeared to shift after launch and it made contact with the system itself. It was unclear what caused the bizarre malfunction.
