Russian Su-35 Jet ‘Disappears from Radars’

A Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jet purportedly “disappeared from the radars” near Mariupol on Friday, just after Ukraine claimed to have taken out 13 Russian aircraft in just under two weeks.

Multiple Russia-Ukraine war monitoring channels reported that the fighter jet went missing near the Russian-occupied Donetsk city on the northern coast of the Sea of Azov. While the status of the jet was unconfirmed, if its disappearance was the result of a Ukrainian attack, it would be the 14th aircraft purportedly destroyed by Kyiv in 14 days.

“Some monitoring channels report that the Russian Su-35 fighter jet disappeared from the radars in the Mariupol area,” Ukrainian Front blog account wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “It may have been shot down. We are waiting for information from the Air Force of Ukraine.”

Newsweek reached out for comment to the Ukrainian military via email on Friday.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry claimed to have downed two Su-35s, 10 Su-34 fighter-bombers and one A-50 long-range radar detection and control aircraft over the previous 13 days.

“The impact of losing 13 aircraft in almost as many days, and possibly some of their highly trained pilots, is not negligible for the Russian military,” U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in a report published on Thursday.

The A-50 was only the second aircraft of its type that Ukraine has claimed to destroy during the entire war, with just six more of the surveillance jets purportedly still in service.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claims that 345 Russian aircraft were taken out since the beginning of the invasion on February 24, 2022. The recent claimed average of one aircraft destroyed per day suggests that Ukraine’s air defenses have become more effective as the war begins its third year.

Additionally, Ukraine claims to have eliminated at least 414,680 Russian military personnel from the battlefield, including deaths and service-ending injuries. Newsweek cannot independently verify any of Kyiv’s figures.

The Oryx open-source intelligence tracker listed a total of 240 Russian airplanes and helicopters destroyed during the Ukraine war as of Thursday, including seven Su-35 jets.

Michael Bohnert, engineer at the RAND Corporation think tank, wrote in an opinion article published by Defense News in August that “overuse” of aircraft was “costing Russia as the war drags on.”

“In a protracted war, where one force tries to exhaust the other, it’s the total longevity of the military force that matters,” he wrote. “And that’s where the VKS [Russian Air Force] finds itself now.”

Bohnert also pointed out that Russia would soon have to contend with the “very different Ukrainian threat” of F-16 fighter jets. Ukrainian pilots are currently training on the jets, which are expected to enter the war later this year.