Kyiv - Saba:
Ukraine announced on Sunday that its air force lost another F-16 fighter jet last night and that its pilot was killed.
The Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement: "Tonight, pilot First Class Colonel Maksym Ustimenko (born 1993) was killed in an F-16 crash."
The statement explained that the pilot was participating in "responding to a major attack" before his aircraft sustained damage and began to lose altitude. Ustimenko was able to divert the aircraft away from a populated area but was unable to eject.
Ukrainian forces lost another F-16 in similar circumstances last May, and another F-16 crashed last April amid suspicions that it was shot down by friendly fire.
The Wall Streeter Journal previously reported that Ukraine shot down one of its F-16s in the summer of 2024 because Washington withheld from Kyiv a critical technology related to the Link 16 identification system, which transmits information about the aircraft's location to military personnel on the ground, enabling them to distinguish between friendly and enemy aircraft.