From the Sky
Ukrainian anti-aircraft crews operating near Bakhmut recently shot down a powerful, high-cost Russian weapon.
It happened on March 29
The news was released on the social media of the Ukrainian Air Force, which specifies the type of weapon destroyed: a Su-24M fighter-bomber.
The fate of the two pilots is still unknown
However, there was no mention of whether or not the pilots of the aircraft survived the attack by Ukraine’s anti-aircraft missiles.
No independent verification of the downing
CNN, however, noted that the information provided by Ukraine’s Air Force could not be independently verified.
Bakhmut saw several planes shot down in March
If the information is true, it would be the third Russian bomber shot down in the skies over Bakhmut in March, the second being the Su-24 in two weeks.
The downing of the Su-24 on March 15 in Bakhmut
On March 15, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yarmik, released a video showing the destruction of a Su-24 by Ukraine’s 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade.
It crashed in “mysterious” area
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry added the exact coordinates of the downing, as well as a description comparing the area where the aircraft crashed to the Bermuda Triangle.
The Bakhmut Triangle
“The most mysterious place in Ukraine is the Bakhmut triangle, where Russian planes have been disappearing, for a year,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry wrote in apparent jest in its Twitter post.
The first plane crashed in March
According to the Kyiv Independent, a Russian Su-24 fighter-bomber was also shot down over Bakhmut in early March, leaving one Russian pilot dead and another injured.
Russia has lost many planes since invading Ukraine
Since the start of the war, Russia has lost hundreds of its most important aircraft. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, as of March 31, specifically, 306 planes have been shot down.
How many planes has Russia really lost since the beginning of the war?
Meanwhile, other data is estimated by Oryx, a Dutch non-profit open source intelligence group that tracks visual losses of Russian equipment from image and video evidence. The organization claims that the number of Russian aircraft taken out of the fight is smaller than that provided by Ukraine. In that case, there would be 78 aircraft destroyed and 70 damaged.
Nine Su-24Ms have been destroyed so far
A total of nine Russian Su-24M bombers have been shot down in the war, according to Oryx, Seven of them destroyed and two others damaged.
Most of the Su-24s were destroyed on the ground
Most of Russia’s Su-24s were not shot down in the air, but rather on the ground, during a daring airstrike in August 2022 against Russia’s Saky airbase in Crimea.
An old Soviet-era bomber
According to Military Today, the Su-24 is an old Soviet-era bomber, first used in the 1960s. It has the capability to carry nuclear weapons and has an updated variant, in the late 1980s, the SU-24-M.
Still a powerful weapon
“The Su-24 remains a powerful long-range, low-level strike aircraft with real precision strike capability in any weather,” defines Military Today.
An expensive loss for the Russian Air Force
According to Aero Corner, the price of a new Su-24 in 1997 was approximately $25 million. Today, adjusting for inflation, the aircraft would be equivalent to $42 million.
