As of: February 28, 2024, 12:41 p.m
By: Bettina Menzel
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Split
A Russian A-50 aircraft at a Belarusian air base (archive image, March 2023).
© picture alliance/dpa/AP |
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The situation on the front is tense, but Ukraine has now apparently scored an important blow in the air.
Meanwhile, Russian military bloggers are speculating about “friendly fire.”
Krasnodar - Kiev's troops recently landed several strikes against Russian aircraft in the Ukraine war.
Among them on Friday (February 23) was apparently an A-50 spy plane.
The air reconnaissance monitors enemy aircraft and missiles and is a central component in the coordination of Russian air forces and air defense.
The Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense is claiming success, but Russian military bloggers are speculating about “friendly fire”.
Destruction of an A-50 reconnaissance aircraft: shot down or “friendly fire”?
Last Friday, Ukraine reported that it had shot down another Russian A-50 reconnaissance aircraft.
“I would like to thank the main intelligence of the Ministry of Defense and everyone who ensured this result,” said Air Force Chief Mykola Oleshchuk on the Telegram platform.
The plane crashed over the Krasnodar region of southern Russia.
However, Russia did not officially confirm the incident; the state news agency Tass only reported a fire near Krasnodar - due to a "falling flying object".
The information provided by both sides could not be independently verified.
Apparently, Russian military bloggers now have doubts as to whether the shelling on Friday could have been due to technical malfunctions or “friendly fire” – i.e. fire from their own ranks.
American-made Patriot air defense systems can combat air targets at a distance of up to 160 kilometers.
However, the shooting apparently occurred outside of this range.
There have been several cases of friendly fire in the past.
Last October, Russian anti-aircraft defense forces took one of their own planes out of the sky over the Zaporizhzhia area.
According to the Bild
newspaper , the Ukrainian Telegram channel “Spy Dossier”
even expressed the assumption, which cannot be independently verified, that there was a “mistake in Russia’s friend-enemy system”.
Ukraine has found a way to override the friend-enemy identifier and mark its own planes as Ukrainian attackers, it is claimed.
A shooting down of the A-50 by one's own troops would therefore be a possibility.
On the other hand, air defenses are mobile systems that are constantly moved by Ukrainian troops in order to disguise their current location and thus protect against counterattacks.
Such a shift has already been behind other successes against Russian aircraft.
Ukraine shoots down several Su-34 fighter jets: “Russian planes set a trap”
Recently, Ukrainian successes in the air have been piling up: Ukraine has destroyed seven Su-34 fighter jets in the past few days, former NATO general Erhard Bühler summarized in his podcast “What to do, Mr. General?” published last Friday , even before the A-50 was shot down.
The military expert sees a shift in air defense as one reason for this “momentary success for the Ukrainians,” as he said.
The Ukrainian military has moved long-range air defense systems such as Patriot and others further east “and set a trap for Russian aircraft.”
Because of these shootings, the Russian commanders were even heavily criticized by their own war correspondents, the military said.
“I don’t want to downplay it, it’s a tactical success for the Ukrainians,” Bühler continued.
However, the success can only be explained by the fact that air defense was brought forward at the expense of protecting the cities.
But they believed they “could and had to afford this because of the successes that the Russians had, especially in the Avdiivka area - with exactly this means of attack: the Su-34 with glide bombs.”
Already the second loss of an A-50 within a few weeks: “Highly significant and embarrassing”
According to its own statements, Ukraine had already shot down an A-50 and another Ilyushin Il-22 reconnaissance aircraft over the Sea of Azov in mid-January.
At that time too, there was speculation in Russia that it had been shot down by friendly fire.
Justin Bronk, air combat expert at the think tank Rusi, commented on the shooting down of the A-50 in January that it was “operationally extremely significant and embarrassing” for the Russian Air Force.
Russia only has about half a dozen operational A-50 aircraft, as the German Press Agency reported, citing military experts.
In total, the Russian military has lost 105 aircraft since the start of the war, according to ge-verified data from the Oryx database.
The Ukrainian General Staff claims to have destroyed or damaged 340 aircraft (as of February 26, 2024).
According to military experts, the true numbers are probably somewhere in the middle of these two figures.