Ukraine “destroyed” a Russian Su-34 supersonic jet over the Kursk region where Kyiv’s forces are advancing following a surprise incursion into Russia just over a week ago, according to Ukraine’s military.
Ukrainian forces took out the fighter-bomber on Tuesday evening, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement on Wednesday. The Su-34 is one of the more advanced aircraft Moscow has used against Ukraine.
A video circulating on social media on Wednesday shows a distant blaze, with a comment accompanying the footage saying Russia had lost another Su-34 over the Kursk region.
Russia has not commented, and rarely offers statements on its own losses. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
Thousands of Ukrainian troops crossed over into Kursk last week, launching the most significant advance into Russian territory since the start of full-scale war nearly two-and-a-half years ago.
Moscow rushed to respond, sending reinforcements to the border as Kyiv’s fighters quickly advanced. The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, declared a state of emergency across the region last week, an action mirrored by Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the neighboring Belgorod region, early on Wednesday.
The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed to have stopped Ukrainian forces gaining ground, but reports from Russia’s influential community of military bloggers, Western experts and Ukrainian officials contradict Moscow’s official line.
The Ukrainian military currently controls 74 settlements in Kursk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday, as Kyiv officials begin to more openly acknowledge the incursion following days of silence. Ukraine’s army chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Monday that Kyiv controlled just under 400 square miles of Kursk. There is some doubt among Western analysts over whether Ukraine has a full grasp on this territory.
U.S.-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said on Tuesday that it believed around 41 Kursk settlements were under Ukrainian control, although there are “many extremely small settlements and localities within this area” that were excluded from this tally.
The overall goals of the operation, and what Ukraine’s next steps will be, are still murky. However, Kyiv has indicated that it is “not interested in taking the territory of the Kursk region,” but that the incursion is designed to protect Ukraine from highly destructive strikes launched from Kursk.
Russia’s Su-34 jets have launched waves of glide bombs across Ukraine in recent months, posing serious problems for Ukraine’s air defense systems and supporting Moscow’s advances along the eastern front lines.
Earlier this month, Kyiv’s GUR military intelligence agency said it had destroyed a Russian Su-34 during an attack on the Morozovsk air base, in the southwestern Russian region of Rostov.
Ukraine has repeatedly targeted air bases in Russia using domestically-made drones. It is not allowed to use Western-supplied long-range weapons to carry out these attacks.
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