One of the two Su-25 military aircraft downed in eastern Ukraine on July 23 could have been shot down with an air-to-air missile launched from a Russian fighter, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has told the BBC.
“Probably the second fighter was shot down with an air-to-air
missile. This means that it was shot down by another fighter that was
definitely not a Ukrainian one,” he said.
When asked whether he is ready to say confidently that the Ukrainian
Su-25 was downed by the Russian Air Force, Yatsenyuk said: “We all know
who is behind all this. We know who supplies arms, who finances
terrorists, who supports pro-Russian rebels, and who supplied an SA-11
[Buk] system that shot down passenger plane MH17.”
As reported, two Su-25 fighters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were
downed near the village of Dmytrivka, Donetsk region, on Wednesday, July
23. The pilots managed to eject. The anti-terrorist operation (ATO)
headquarters said that the warplanes had been shot down with
anti-aircraft missile systems. Ukrainian National Security and Defense
Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that according to preliminary
reports, missiles had been fired from Russia’s territory, as the planes
were shot down at an altitude of 5.2 kilometers, whereas the rebels have
air-defense missile systems that hit targets at an altitude of no more
than 1.5 kilometers.
