FACT-CHECK: Did a Ukrainian F-16 Shoot Down a Russian Su-34 Fighter Bomber?

The Russian Air Force’s recent and not-a-little embarrassing loss of another $42 million jet and crew in air combat in Ukraine is almost certain, but solid proof backing up reports a Ukrainian pilot scored Kyiv’s first ever F-16 kill of a Russian aircraft is pretty difficult to find, a Kyiv Post fact check of the engagement found.

The first report of the engagement appears to have appeared in a Telegram channel written by a long-time milblogger called VDV Za Chesnost’ I Spravedlivost, at 12:23 PM on Saturday Oct. 12.

The full text of the Russian-language account of the shoot down said:

“Urgent!!! Our Su-34 was shot down. The crew was killed. The plane was shot down during a FAB (high explosive bomb) drop with a UMPK (glide bomb kit fitted to the bomb), approximately 50 km from the front line. Our Su-34 was apparently shot down by an F-16, which was over enemy-controlled territory. Soon there will be more such losses. NATO has sent F-16s out to hunt. Now there will be fewer FABs flying at the Ukrainians. Consequently, our infantry losses will increase.”

The Sukhoi-34 (NATO reporting name: Fullback) is Russia’s most modern strike aircraft. In combat against Ukraine, the plane most often flies missions dropping glide bombs launched from outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses.

According to previous posts in the channel, the author VDV is a Russian paratroop officer serving with Kremlin forces deployed in the south of Ukraine. By the standards of the Russo-Ukrainian War, its readership is modest with 12,400 followers. The channel began operations on July 18 2023, relatively late for major pro-Russia milbloggers, most of whom started creating content in the late 2010s.

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Contrasting sharply with those longer-established pro-Moscow platforms, some of whose creators appear openly on Russian state media, content published by VDV has remained anonymous, but also consistently critical of Russian military leadership, particularly regarding General Mikhail Teplinskiy, the commander of Russia’s Group of Forces South. The VDV channel calls for Teplinskiy’s sacking on grounds of incompetence almost daily.

VDV’s report about a Ukrainian F-16 downing a Russian Su-34 quickly went viral and world-wide, spreading across oceans and onto mainstream news platforms in hours. Kyiv Post researchers found the VDV’s post about the alleged shoot-down cited in news media in South America, China, and in major publications on both sides of the Atlantic.

According to multiple sources, the Russian plane went down to the east of the Ukrainian city Kramatorsk, on the eastern Donbas front. Images of ground debris, commonly quickly going public following the destruction of a Russian combat aircraft, were not to be seen on both Ukrainian and Russian military information platforms 60 hours after the VDV report.

A single video of a falling Su-34, batted back and forth among some bloggers on Sunday, turned out to be a retread of a shoot down video captured in 2022.

Some Russian milbloggers have alleged the VDV Telegram channel purporting to be comment and opinion by a patriotic Russian service member, is in fact a Ukrainian false flag operation pushing bad news about the Russian military into Russian-language social media. VDV channel managers had not responded to a Kyiv Post request for comment by the time this article was filed.

The hugely popular Russian milblogger FighterBomber, a vehemently anti-Ukrainian Telegram contributor closely associated with and openly supportive of the Russian Air Force, in an Oct. 13 post confirmed the aircraft had been lost in operations.

Claims an F-16 shot the Su-34 down are groundless, he said, because Ukraine’s Air Force as a matter of policy keeps the NATO-standard aircraft far from the front line, because of fears of media and public affairs blow-back were an F-16 to be shot down. VDV’s claims are Kyiv-generated fake news, he told 500,000+ followers.

“Dear subscribers. The war is in its third year. Wars are [fought] not only on the battlefield, but also on the Internet. Both ours and others are fighting for your, in some places, immature brains,” a furious Oct. 13 post said. “They either p*ss in your ears or don't tell you the whole truth, or don't tell you anything at all. It's different in all cases. Some people get paid for a pure lie.”

Both crewmen died and the aircraft was a total loss, he said.

Major Ukrainian media have reported the F-16 vs. Su-34 news story cautiously, with most pointing out neither the Russian Defense Ministry nor Ukrainian officials had commented on the incident at all. Articles clearly sourcing confirmation of the shoot down to major western publications, rather than a Ukrainian or Russian source, were common. Practically all cited the VDV blog entry and called it unconfirmed.

Ukraine’s Air Force by Monday afternoon had not responded to a Kyiv Post request for comment. The Russian Defense Ministry’s public information feeds from Saturday through Monday made no mention of the loss of any Russian Air Force aircraft, anywhere.

The Russian Voina S Feykami (War With Fake News) information platform on Sunday claimed the VDV report conflated a real crash of an Su-34 in training in East Siberian Khabarovsk region, with imagined combat activity in eastern Ukraine.

VDV said its information was accurate and pointed out Russian media had not, until War With Fake News mentioned it, admitted the Russian Air Force lost an Su-34 in a training crash in the Far East.

FighterBomber said possible causes of the Su-34 loss, location not specified, were maintenance, weather and pilot error - but Ukrainian military action was not one of them. He said that when the Su-34 went down, its crew was “fighting” in combat operations.

Kyiv Post analysis using Russian reports of the location the Su-34 went down, and specs of the F-16s in use by the Ukrainian Air Force, found that a long-range missile shot from airspace inside Ukraine was technically possible but far riskier than known engagements to which Kyiv has deployed the aircraft in the past.

For a Ukrainian F-16 to have tracked and shot down a Russian Su-34 some 50 kilometers behind the fighting line, the Ukrainian plane would have had to been at an altitude certainly making it visible to Russian anti-aircraft radars, and almost certainly well within engagement ranges of Russian ground-launched missiles, Kyiv Post researchers concluded.

To make a shot on an Su-34 making a run to drop a glider bomb, the Ukrainian pilot would probably have had to fly for along a fairly predictable trajectory relatively easy for an anti-aircraft missile to intercept, at an altitude readily visible to Russian air defense systems, for about a minute, that research found.

The high risk of getting shot down in an attempt to intercept a Russian fighter bomber on track to drop a glider bomb is one reason the few F-16s operated by the Ukrainian Air Force have not been seen attacking incoming Russian aircraft in the past. According to news reports, Ukraine received six Denmark-donated F-16s in late July.

To date, Ukraine’s Air Force has admitted the loss of one F-16 in combat. According to reports, during a Russian missile and drone attack against civilian targets in deep north-west Ukraine on Aug. 28 a fighter piloted by Oleksii Mes crashed and burned. An Air Force investigation into the incident is still ongoing. Ukrainian news agencies have reported Mes may have flown his plane into the debris of drone he had just shot down.