Russian Air Force Su-25s.
Capture of the Russian Air Force
The Russian Air Force reportedly had a very bad day. On Saturday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced that its forces had shot down four Russian warplanes within 24 hours. One Su-34, two Su-30s and one Su-25.
Videos circulating on the Internet It seems to confirm at least two crossfire. Ministry of Defense of Ukraine “Today is a good day” chirp.
The air losses come nearly a month after the Ukrainian army launched two counterattacks in the south and east. The eastern counterattack broke through the Russian lines outside Kharkiv and led to the rapid collapse of the Russian army in the region.
The southern counterattack appears to have been slower, but still successful.
The Russian Air Force was not found anywhere in the first week of counterattacks. Ukrainian units have close air support. Russian units…didn’t.
Analysts attributed the absence of the Russian Air Force to the permanent strength of Ukrainian air defenses, as well as to the Russian air warfare doctrine that allocates warplanes to bomb pre-planned targets. The Russian Air Force does not train its pilots to think and operate independently – prerequisites for tracking moving targets.
When the enemy moves on, the Russian Air Force struggles to keep up.
Once the Russians withdrew from Kharkiv Oblast, the Ukrainian offensive in the area slowed down – the Russian Air Force returned to the battlefield, bombing the positions recently vacated by Russian forces as the Ukrainian forces advanced.
On September 15, two Russian bombers – at least one of them a two-seat Su-34 – bombed Ukrainian positions outside the town of Spern in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
No one responded, perhaps indicating that the Ukrainian air defenses lagged behind the front-line battalions that advanced on Spern.
An alternative explanation – that the Russian Air Force has suppressed Ukraine’s surface-to-air cannons and missiles – seems unlikely. While the Ukrainians relentlessly attacked Russia’s air defenses using a mixture of old Soviet fighters and newer American-made anti-radiation missiles, the Russians you did not managed to continue the attacks on Ukrainian Air defences.
So it may be a matter of time before Ukrainian guns and missiles catch up with maneuvering battalions โ and catch Russian warplanes heading inland to drop their bombs.
on Friday, A video has appeared online It depicts a Ukrainian Strela surface-to-air missile vehicle, said to belong to the 25th Airborne Brigade, rolling into Yatskivka, 40 miles northwest of Spern in the Donbass. The next day, the Russians reportedly lost two aircraft – a single-seat Su-25 and a two-seater Su-30 – in the same area.
โCrap Day,โ lamented one of the popular social media accounts focused on Russian aviation.
Four losses of warplanes in one day are catastrophic for the Russian Air Force. The entire air force, which initially deployed about 300 aircraft in and around Ukraine in order to support Russia’s wider war, had written off a few days ago only 53 aircraft that analysts can confirm.
These losses may have become more severe. up to 57.
