Maksym Ustimenko’s plane downed seven air targets before descending and crashing, the air force reports. Ukraine has lost an F-16 fighter plane and its pilot while fending off a Russian missile and drone attack, the country’s air force says, as intense fighting in the war, now in its fourth year, drags on day by day with no end to the conflict in sight.
Having downed seven air targets, the aircraft was damaged and lost height during the night, the Ukrainian army announced in a statement posted on Telegram on Sunday.
During a repelling of a huge enemy aerial attack, a 1st class pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustimenko, born in 1993, perished on an F-16 aircraft,” the statement said.
In a separate release, the air force announced Russia fired 537 projectiles into Ukraine, including Shahed drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. Ukraine said it had shot down 475 of them.
In the Kyiv Independent newspaper, it was reported that there were reported sounds of explosions and strikes in several regions of the country, including southern Mykolaiv, southeastern Zaporizhia and western Lviv.
Ihor Taburets, the governor of central Ukraine’s Cherkasy oblast, said at least six individuals were hurt and civilian property was damaged in the attacks. Three multistoried buildings and a college building were damaged in the attack, he added.
Industrial plants were damaged in the southern Ukrainian area of Mykolaiv and central Dnipropetrovsk region, officials report. Regional authorities posted pictures of skyscraper apartment houses with burned walls and shattered windows, and rescuers carrying out evacuations.
In Russia, the Defence Ministry reported its troops downed three Ukrainian drones in the border regions of Kursk and Rostov, and in Ukraine’s annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Russia’s state-owned RIA Novosti news agency reported a Ukrainian drone killed one person in the Russian-controlled portion of Ukraine’s Luhansk region. Moscow also asserted Sunday that it had captured the village of Novoukrainka in the partially Russian-occupied Donetsk region.
The renewed violence follows after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday that he planned to reduce military spending and also signaled that he was prepared for another round of peace talks with Ukraine.
