By SUSIE BLANN (Related Press)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian authorities have launched an investigation after a midair collision between two warplanes within the west of the nation killed three pilots.
Ukraine’s air power spokesman Yuri Ihnat advised Ukrainian tv on Sunday it wasn’t instantly clear how lengthy the probe would take.
In response to the air power’s Telegram web page, two L-39 coaching navy plane collided on Friday throughout a fight mission over Ukraine’s western Zhytomyr area. Three pilots had been killed, together with Andriy Pilshchykov, a widely known pilot with the nickname “Juice” who was an outspoken advocate for Ukraine getting F-16 fighter jets.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his nightly handle on Saturday paid tribute to Pilshchykov, describing him as a “Ukrainian officer, a type of who helped our nation lots.”
Ukraine’s Vasilkiv tactical aviation brigade on Sunday recognized the opposite two pilots killed within the collision as Viacheslav Minka and Serhiy Prokazin.
Russian forces, within the meantime, focused central and northern areas of Ukraine with cruise missiles in a single day. Ukraine’s air power on Sunday reported air defenses efficiently intercepted 4 of them. Within the Kyiv area surrounding the Ukrainian capital, the falling particles broken a dozen personal houses and wounded two individuals, Ukraine’s Inside Ministry stated.
Russia’s Protection Ministry stated in a press release Sunday that it focused — and efficiently hit — an airfield within the Kyiv area. Ukrainian officers didn’t instantly touch upon the declare.
In Kyiv, family members of troopers captured by Russian forces in Mariupol, a port metropolis in jap Ukraine Moscow’s military besieged and seized early on within the warfare, gathered for a rally marking 500 days since their members of the family had been in captivity. They demanded that the Ukrainian authorities convey their family members residence.
In Russia, the Protection Ministry reported bringing down two drones over the Bryansk and Kursk areas that border Ukraine. The drones, the ministry stated, had been launched by “the Kyiv regime” in “one more try at terrorist assaults” on Russian soil.
Kursk Gov. Roman Starovoit, nonetheless, reported {that a} drone slammed right into a multistory residential constructing within the area’s namesake capital. It wasn’t instantly clear if it crashed after being shot down by air defenses, just like the Protection Ministry reported, or was focusing on the constructing. Starovoit stated nobody was harm, however a variety of home windows had been shattered.
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Comply with AP’s protection of the warfare in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Dasha Litvinova contributed to this report from Tallinn, Estonia.
