They defend their sky resourcefully and flexibly; Ukraine makes Putin’s pilots shake. At least one plane is a wreck again.
Kiev – “Eternal flight ‘brothers’,” Mykola Oleshchuk had added when he announced the news. The commander of the Ukrainian Air Force has on his Telegram-Channel the shooting of three Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber reported. They are said to have been taken out of the sky on Friday at 12 noon local time (11 a.m. CET), marking another success against the threat of air sovereignty of Russia in the Ukraine war. This information is unconfirmed. According to that Deutschlandfunk a shooting was observed. Vladimir Putin receives further bad news from Japan and the Netherlands: their air force now wants to deliver the F-16 fighter jets announced in August, Japan is sending Patriot missiles to the USA.
In any case, the Russian Air Force is the weakest asset of Vladimir Putin’s invasion troops. Since the beginning of the military conflict in Ukraine, international observers have unanimously praised the defenders for keeping their skies open. “While the Russian Air Force has so far surprisingly – and fortunately – only partially exploited its immense potential, which exists on paper, the actions of the Ukrainian air defense forces deserve the highest respect,” writes, for example General Swiss military magazine.
Even at the beginning of the operation, which was originally intended to be less extensive, the skies remained clear of machines in order to specifically eliminate the Ukrainian ground-based air defense. There was also no electronic interference with communication from the air. The experts rubbed their eyes in surprise at this lack of consistency. The majority of the 300 modern Sukhoi Su-30SM, Su-34 and Su-35S remained mostly grounded during the first days of the war, although they were stationed near the border.
Ukraine left defenseless: the air force is partly to blame
American military observers told the news agency at the beginning of the war that the ongoing high losses of the Russian ground troops were primarily due to the failure of the Russian air force Reuters made public: According to them, there was increasing evidence of a lack of coordination between the Russian Air Force and ground force formations, as, for example, several Russian troop columns were advanced beyond the reach of their own air defense cover.
This has left Russian soldiers vulnerable to attacks by Ukrainian forces, including those armed with drones and US and British anti-tank missiles. The United States estimates based on information from the Department of Defense that Russia initially deployed just over 75 aircraft for its invasion of Ukraine. Overall, Russia should be over more than 700 aircraft only for ground attacks. In any case, it was assumed that Russia would place a greater focus on air superiority – in any case, no figures are currently known about the strength of the Russian Air Force. After all, they initially deliberately destroyed Ukrainian radar technology.
The experts also see the decisive factor in Russia’s weakening air warfare in the lack of competence of the pilots General Swiss military magazine writes: “Now the relatively low level of training of the crews with a maximum of 100 flight hours per year may also be noticeable. Not to be forgotten is the fact that the air force has been rapidly equipped with 350 new aircraft over the past ten years, which obviously has not yet been absorbed in terms of training and operational procedures.”
Russia’s immense losses: army decimated by a quarter
These losses add up to catastrophic totals of deaths on the ground. Current numbers that ZDF Published based on US intelligence information, speak of up to 360,000 fallen Russian soldiers from the units that originally belonged to the expeditionary forces – according to this, Vladimir Putin would have lost almost 90 percent of his original troops. That goes on ZDF 2,200 tanks were lost out of 3,500 originally deployed, as well as 4,400 armored personnel carriers lost – originally 13,600 had probably been rolled in. According to the report, by the end of November the Russian ground forces had lost more than a quarter of the military equipment they initially had.
The British Ministry of Defense is loud ZDF of around 70,000 Russians who have been killed in Moscow’s war of aggression so far. These are 50,000 regular soldiers and 20,000 members of the former Wagner private army. The number of wounded in London is estimated at 180,000 to 240,000 soldiers and 40,000 former Wagner fighters.
The German military expert Colonel iG Wolfgang Richter from Geneva Center for Security Policy calculated compared to that ZDF more cautious: According to Richter’s calculations, the losses of the Russian army amount to around 250,000 killed and injured, of which over 150,000 were irreversible losses – 70,000 killed and the same number seriously wounded. For Ukraine, too, there were over 120,000 irreversible losses, including more than 50,000 seriously injured people. He assumes the number of casualties was 25 to 30 percent of the total losses. He classifies a maximum of 40 percent as lightly wounded who can return to the troops in the medium term. If the numbers were actually higher, Richter suspects, Putin would have had to raise new troops long ago. These are just speculations, the true loss figures are unclear.
The big fear of aviators: Stinger missiles are extremely effective
Furthermore, Western arms deliveries have been able to maintain their threat to the Russian Air Force. Death for the Russian pilots often starts from a right shoulder: the use of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from NATO stocks pushed the Russians out of their range of up to six kilometers and thus to higher altitudes. And further up the Russians are flying towards Ukraine’s Patriot bar. The first SU-34s were shot down as a result. The increased evasion into the night also had no lasting success for the Russian invasion army due to the inexperience of the pilots.
Especially the British think tank Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI) also makes up tactical weaknesses: The British have primarily documented successful attacks by individual bombers on static targets – for example on radar systems. Operations in larger formations were therefore largely absent. The individual planes would have had more selective successes rather than causing damage of a larger tactical extent. In addition, the Ukrainian defenders have adapted to the new way of warfare, decentralizing their units and exploiting the vastness of their space thanks to mobile units. In fact, this also contributed to the fact that the modern SU-34 fighter bombers in particular had to shift their missions to the night and concentrate on bombing civilian targets in order to at least wear down the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian defenders.
According to the RUSI-Experts have, firstly, only found the SU-34 fighter bombers to be successful in flying low-level attacks against Ukrainian units on the ground, but on the other hand, they also appear to be subject to the stress test of the long war. RUSI-Author Jack Watling analyzes that with every lost plane, the fear of the Russian leadership and the individual pilots increases.
Putin’s next bad news: Netherlands is now delivering F-16s
This fear will increase as the Netherlands will now reinforce the Ukrainian Air Force with 18 F-16 fighter jets. Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren announced this in The Hague. The Netherlands had already agreed in August to make the machines available for the training of Ukrainian pilots in Romania. “With this decision, the Netherlands confirms that it will continue to make maximum efforts to provide Ukraine with the support it needs in the fight against ongoing Russian aggression,” wrote Prime Minister Mark Rutte on X (formerly Twitter).
Ukraine is now also receiving support from Japan: According to the New York Times Although they will not be delivered to any war or crisis zone, the USA will now receive replacements from Japan for the systems they delivered to Ukraine. This poses a renewed serious threat to the Russian pilots, who are more afraid of missiles than of air combat – they have even often targeted their own air defense missiles because communication between the Russian target detection system and their own pilots is constantly disrupted is disturbed. In part, it is claimed, due to cheap electronic components from China.
The Russian Air Force most recently shot down its own Sukhoi Su-25 in mid-December – in any case, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Mykola Oleshchuk, denied any complicity and used the opportunity to give a thank-you speech to the Russian leadership: “Those were the clear and well-coordinated actions of the Russian anti-aircraft forces, and, I would like to say: a big thank you to them on behalf of the entire Ukrainian people!”