One day after Ukraine reports fighter jet pilot’s death, Russia says it shot down F-16

The Russian Defense Ministry reported in its daily briefing on Sunday that Russian forces had shot down a Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet.

“Air defenses shot down a Ukrainian Air Force F-16, eight JDAM precision-guided bombs, seven HIMARS rockets supplied by the United States, and 207 fixed-wing drones,” the ministry said. The statement did not specify when or where the F-16 was downed.

A day earlier, Ukraine’s Air Force announced that Captain Pavlo Ivanov had been killed while carrying out a combat mission in an F-16. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posthumously awarded him the title of Hero of Ukraine.

A source from the BBC’s Ukrainian Service said Ivanov’s aircraft may have been hit by a Russian missile. “In total, the Russians fired three missiles at the jet. It was either a guided surface-to-air missile from an S-400 system or an air-to-air R-37 missile,” the source, a Ukrainian official, told the BBC.

He ruled out the possibility that Ukrainian forces had shot the plane down in a friendly fire incident, saying there were no Ukrainian air defense systems operating in the area where Ivanov was flying.