Ukraine downs a Russian fighter jet, Moscow’s bloggers say pilot survived

Ukraine’s Air Force says it shot down another Russian fighter jet, announcing the kill in a brief statement that leaned more on bravado than battlefield detail.

“Good news from the Air Force! Today we subtracted another Russian air terrorist! Glory to Ukraine! More to come!” the Air Force said in its official statement.

The claim gained a second layer of credibility from Sonyashnyk, a Telegram community that has developed a reputation for close ties to Ukrainian military aviators and has previously published footage and details of Ukrainian air operations before official channels confirmed them. Sonyashnyk’s statement on the shootdown suggested a more specific and personal motive behind the celebration than the Air Force’s own announcement let on, describing the downed pilot as someone who had been a persistent thorn in Ukrainian operations.

“Today the very experienced enemy pilot who had been giving us serious trouble in this direction was shot down in combat,” the statement read. “Thanks to everyone involved, you’re simply the best minds, we look forward to more new ideas and results.” That framing, if accurate, would suggest Ukrainian forces had identified and specifically targeted a known Russian pilot rather than downing an aircraft in a routine engagement, though neither the Air Force nor Sonyashnyk provided evidence establishing the pilot’s identity or prior record.

Russian military commentator Oleksii Zemtsov, who runs the Telegram channel “Voevoda Veshchaet,” acknowledged the loss and identified the downed aircraft as a Su-35, a Russian-made 4.5-generation multirole fighter that has served as one of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ primary air superiority platforms throughout the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Zemtsov’s account claimed the pilot survived and managed to reach Russian-held positions, a detail that, if accurate, would mean this incident differs from several previous Su-35 losses where Ukrainian sources reported the pilot did not survive. Beyond Zemtsov’s channel, other Russian aviation-focused commentators reportedly corroborated the loss of the aircraft as well.

What remains genuinely unconfirmed is how the aircraft was actually destroyed. Unverified reports circulating alongside the announcement suggested a Ukrainian F-16 fighter may have been responsible for the shootdown, but as of this reporting, neither the Ukrainian Air Force nor Russian officials had confirmed that detail, and the claim should be treated as speculative rather than established fact.

Ukraine’s Air Force reported a broadly similar incident in June 2025, when it announced the destruction of a Su-35S over Russia’s Kursk region, a claim later reinforced by drone footage showing the wrecked aircraft on the ground near the village of Yurasovo, according to reporting from Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi. German newspaper Bild reported at the time, citing Ukrainian sources, that the June 2025 shootdown involved a Ukrainian F-16 firing an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile with targeting data supplied by a Swedish-built Saab 340 airborne early warning aircraft operating hundreds of kilometers away, an operation Bild characterized as a historic first for Ukraine’s F-16 fleet. Independent outlet The War Zone noted at the time that the Ukrainian Air Force’s own statement did not specify the weapon used, leaving the F-16 and AMRAAM details as claims sourced to Ukrainian social media and German reporting rather than an official Ukrainian confirmation, a pattern strikingly similar to the ambiguity surrounding the claim reported here.

The Su-35 itself has proven a costly aircraft for Russia to keep flying over contested Ukrainian and Russian airspace. Open-source tracking put the number of confirmed Su-35 losses at eight since the war’s outset as of mid-2025, with causes ranging from Ukrainian Patriot missile strikes near Bryansk in 2023 to at least one confirmed friendly-fire incident involving a Russian S-300 system near Tokmak. Despite those losses, Russian state manufacturer Rostec has claimed the Su-35S has destroyed more enemy targets in air-to-air combat than any other fighter type in the Russian Armed Forces.