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Ukraine is facing allegations that its first loss of an F-16 may have involved friendly fire with a Patriot missile battery, though its armed forces haven’t confirmed those reports.
It’s still unclear exactly what caused the crash, which killed the Ukrainian Air Force pilot Oleksiy Mes and was reported by Kyiv on Thursday.
Ukraine said the pilot, a 30-year-old lieutenant colonel, was killed in combat on August 26 and had downed three cruise missiles and one attack drone before his death. Mes was posthumously promoted to the rank of Colonel.
The crash is still being investigated, but The Telegraph reported on Saturday that early findings suggest the aircraft was shot down by a US-provided Patriot missile battery.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the crash, also cited unnamed US officials who said preliminary investigations indicated the aircraft wasn’t destroyed by enemy fire.
The New York Times published a similar account on Friday, citing an unnamed Western official who had been briefed on the investigation.
There were “indications,” the official told The Times, that a Patriot missile may have brought down the F-16. However, they added that other causes weren’t being ruled out.
A day later, the outlet published another report citing two unnamed senior US officials who said it was unlikely that the cause of the crash was friendly fire.
But further questions have been raised by Ukrainian parliament member Mariana Bezuhla, who claimed on Thursday that she had received information pointing to a friendly fire incident with a Patriot missile due to miscoordination between units.
Mes had been flying as Ukraine fought to repel one of Russia’s fiercest aerial attacks, which involved what Kyiv said was over 200 missiles and drones.
Bezuhla later challenged the Ukrainian air force to refute her claims, accusing the organization of attempting to cover up its mistakes and failing to analyze friendly-fire incidents properly.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the country’s air force chief, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleschuk, on Friday. His office did not say why.
Lt. Gen. Kryvonozhok Anatoliy Mykolayovych is expected to replace Oleschuk.
The losses of both the F-16 and Mes are significant blows to Ukraine, which started receiving the Western fighters this summer and had pressed hard for its allies to supply them.
Mes, known by the callsign “Moonfish,” helped campaign for the West to provide the F-16s, publicly saying they were like upgrading from an old Nokia to an iPhone, and was one of Ukraine’s precious few pilots who could fly them.
The arrival of the F-16s, which cost between $20 million to $70 million each, was widely believed to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses and enable it to carry out better, if limited, raids on high-value targets.
But observers say the aircraft will unlikely be a game changer for Ukraine. Zelenskyy has often pointed to equipment like the F-16s taking too long to reach the war and in limited numbers.
Ukraine is expected to receive about 85 of the fighters, but it is having difficulty getting pilots trained quickly.
Bezuhla, the Ukrainian defense ministry, and the press team for Zelenskyy’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
