Russian President Vladimir Putin praised his air force on Thursday, days after his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv’s forces had downed 15 Russian military aircraft in a month.
“Army aviation, which today performs very serious, very necessary tasks on the battlefield, it, of course, deserves the highest praise and respect,” the Russian president told graduates of the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots, Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.
There has been a recent uptick in the number of Russian military aircraft Ukraine has claimed to have downed. Kyiv’s military said in an update on Thursday that Moscow has so far lost 347 aircraft since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Newsweek could not independently verify Ukraine’s figures and has contacted Russia’s defense ministry for comment by email.
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“This week alone, we managed to shoot down seven Russian military aircraft,” Zelensky said in a video address on March 3. “Since the beginning of February, Russia has lost 15 military aircraft. This is the proper dynamics of their losses.”
Kyiv says it has destroyed Su-34 fighter-bombers, Su-35 fighters and an A-50 airborne early warning and control plane. The A-50 is a Soviet-era reconnaissance aircraft used to prepare strikes and prevent enemy attacks. Each aircraft, which has a crew of 15, costs an estimated $330 million, reported Radio Svoboda, the Russian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, citing government data.
On March 2, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, said in analysis of the conflict in Ukraine that Russian forces “appear to be willing to risk continued aviation losses in pursuit of tactical gains in eastern Ukraine.”
“Previous Russian aircraft losses have prompted Russian forces to temporarily decrease aviation activity throughout Ukraine, but the increased rate of Russian aviation losses in Ukraine in the past weeks has yet to prompt Russian forces to significantly decrease tactical aviation activity,” the think tank assessed.
“Russian forces are likely attempting to reestablish this limited and localized air superiority in order to support tactical Russian advances in the Avdiivka direction and have decided that continued offensive operations with air support outweigh the risk of losing more aircraft,” the ISW added.
Days earlier, on February 20, Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said that Russia had been deploying aircraft less frequently after its recent string of losses.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.