Ukrainian Air Force June Shoot Downs Double Previous Month’s Tally

In a Telegram post on Tuesday Ukraine’s air force (UAF) gave a detailed breakdown of the Russian aerial targets it shot down during attacks on the country in June. It said that Defense Forces destroyed a total of 4,750 air targets during the month which included 159 cruise, ballistic, and guided missiles.

The country faced an upsurge in attacks in June. Over the last week, Russia fired more than 114 missiles and 1,270 drones of various types, on June 29 alone, it used more than 500 weapons in a country-wide combined missile and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attack.

The UAF gave the breakdown of aerial weapons it had intercepted over the month as:

• 8 Kh-47 M2 Kinzhal aero ballistic missiles
• 93 Kh-101/Kh-55SM cruise missiles
• 14 Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles
• 12 Kalibr cruise missiles
• 13 Kh-59/69 guided aircraft missiles
• 27 Iskander-K cruise missiles
• 2,453 Shahed-type strike UAVs
• 659 reconnaissance UAVs
• 1,479 UAVs of other types.

Ukraine’s air force command said that its military aviation had shot down 646 Russian aerial targets during the month compared with 365 in May and 326 in April – a measure of both the increasing intensity of Russian air assaults and the expansion in the number of UAF sorties.

According to the report, Ukrainian aviation carried out a total of 895 sorties in June, using the US F-16, French Mirage 2000, Soviet-era MiG 29 (Fulcrum) fighter aircraft and helicopters to engage incoming cruise missiles and Shahed-type kamikaze drones.

In addition to these air suppression tasks, Ukraine’s aircraft have carried out more than 220 ground attack and air support missions during which they struck command posts, logistics facilities, as well as concentrations of enemy personnel and equipment.

Other Topics of Interest

Moscow Expands Air Defense Sites in City Parks

The site resembles several locations where Russia previously deployed S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems.

This effort has not come without a cost. During the intense June 29 attack, Lt. Col Maksym Ustymenko became the third Ukrainian F-16 pilot to lose his life in combat and his aircraft the fourth of the 85 or so F-16s that Kyiv’s allies have provided.

The other pilot fatalities were of Lt. Col. Oleksii “Moonfish” Mes on Aug. 26, 2024, and 26-year-old pilot Pavlo Ivanov, who was killed during a combat mission on April 12, 2025.