One of the Western F-16 fighters Kyiv received reportedly crashed on Monday during Moscow’s power grid strike against Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing comments from an unnamed US official, said the incident was likely caused by pilot errors and that the plane was not shot down by Russia.
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The Pentagon referred the WSJ to the Ukrainian Air Force for further comments, but the latter “wouldn’t confirm the crash or the status of the pilot,” the WSJ says.
Another unnamed US official told the WSJ that Ukraine received six F-16s and six pilots were trained to fly the aircraft.
On Monday, Aug. 26, Russian drones and missiles battered Ukraine’s power grid across 15 regions, killing at least four people and damaging the Kyiv Hydropower Power Plant (HPP) and an unspecified number of generation and transmission facilities.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday, Aug. 27 that F-16 were used to down missiles during Russia’s massive strike on Monday without further elaboration.
Ukraine likely received the first batch of Western F-16 fighters on July 31, with a Dutch defense official stating earlier that the initial batch of F-16s, donated by the Netherlands, would likely focus on air defense rather than striking ground targets.
On Aug. 26, an elite US Air Force unit specializing in warmtime jamming, radar detection and related software development announced that this batch of F-16 fighter jets has been upgraded with new “electronic warfare capacities.”
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