Kyiv Denies Reports of F-16 Shoot Down After Low-Level Flight Over Sumy Region

Spokespersons for both Ukraine’s Air Force (UAF) and the Center for Countering Disinformation, via Facebook, have dismissed as fake claims that were made by pro-Kremlin milbloggers that a Ukrainian F-16 fighter aircraft was shot down over the Sumy region.

Yurii Ihnat, the head of the AFU communications department said that Ukrainian pilots continue to successfully carry out combat missions without confirming where the sorties were taking place.

Early on Thursday morning the military issues blogger OSINTTechnical posted a video on X that showed a UAF F-16AM Viper flying at low altitude over Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region close to the Russian border.

The aircraft appears to be flying tactically below 100 meters to avoid Russian radar detection and missile threats using direct and indirect terrain masking.

Its presence so close to Russia’s Kursk, Bryansk, and Belgorod regions which has seen a recent upsurge in fighting has prompted military analysts to speculate on what the deployment of one of Ukraine’s limited number of F-16s could mean for Kyiv’s current aerial strategy and tactics.

While Kyiv has not commented on the video the confirmation of an F-16 flying so close to the front line seems to confirm a growing number of reports of increased activity by the F-16s and French Mirage 2000s donated to Ukraine in recent months.

Ukraine received its first batch of F-16s from Denmark and the Netherlands in July 2024 and an undetermined number of Mirage 2000-5Fs fighters from France in February. The aircraft, the first batches of the 80 pledged by the NATO “fighter coalition,” represent a significant upgrade to Ukraine’s aging MiG-29 and Su-27 Soviet-era fighters.

In an online media update on Wednesday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the UAF had received additional F-16 fighters, without specifying when and how many of the aircraft had been received and further denied Russian reports of the loss of an F-16:

“Additional F-16s have arrived in Ukraine. The Russians are lying when they say they shot something down – they shot nothing down. And the good news is that several [additional] F-16 fighter jets have arrived in Ukraine.”

In February Ukraine’s defense minister Rustem Umerov said that the majority of the F-16s promised by Denmark and the Netherlands had been provided following a meeting with his Belgian counterpart, Theo Francken, to discuss how Brussels would implement its part in the fighter coalition.