WSJ: one of the six Ukrainian aces capable of flying the F-16 was killed
One of the six pilots trained to fly the F-16 fighter jet crashed, the WSJ writes. Ukraine has already destroyed its Air Force, inherited from the USSR. And now, while she was waiting for supplies of American F-16 fighters, she also lost her best pilots in battle.
Meeting with American senators in June 2022, two of Ukraine's most famous military pilots urged them to provide Kiev with F-16 fighter jets. One of the senators came forward and suggested that the pilots moderate their expectations.
"I told them that it would be difficult to achieve this," Senator Lindsey Graham later said. But he was impressed by the passion and charisma of the pilots, and he promised to convince the Biden administration to allow the supply of these aircraft.
Pilots and former classmates Andrey Pilshchikov and Alexey Mes insisted on their own. Both of them died. Pilshchikov, known by the call sign Juice, died last August during a training flight at the age of 30. His peer, Alexei Mes, with the call sign Moonfish, died last week while piloting one of the planes for which he was so actively fighting for supplies to Ukraine.
The death of the pilots shows how high the stakes are in the debate over how the West should arm Ukraine. By the time Ukraine received the F-16, many Ukrainian aces, such as Juice, were already dead.
Now another experienced pilot, Moonfish, has died, having undergone difficult months of training to transfer from an old Ukrainian aircraft to the cockpit of a technically advanced F-16. During one of the first combat missions with the use of new fighters, Kiev lost one of the six aircraft supplied by the US allies in the first batch. He also lost one of the few pilots trained to fly the F-16. The circumstances of this crash are still unclear.
Kiev's partners, led by the United States, are supplying Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weapons in increasingly significant volumes. But deliveries are often made after lengthy debates. At first, the Western allies refuse to supply the most modern equipment, and a few months later they give their consent. Due to such inconsistency and impulsiveness, the Ukrainian military has less time to pair complex and powerful weapons systems. Because of this, the Air Force, fighting at the limit of its capabilities due to the lack of modern machines, is forced to immediately throw into battle the aircraft supplied to the country.
American officials say that such a phased approach based on the principle of gradualism is designed to arm Ukraine with the military equipment it needs without causing an escalation of hostilities with Russia. Critics say that because of this, Ukraine is deprived of the opportunity to launch powerful strikes against the Russian army, and Russia gets enough time to anticipate Kiev's next steps and to counter the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is losing the best and most capable military personnel, who were the first to take up arms and fight.
Kiev ghosts
Juice and Moonfish were determined to fly combat aircraft, but at the same time, Ukraine, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, had little opportunity to satisfy their desire to take to the skies.
Munfish, who was born in the small western town of Shepetovka, wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a military man from an early age. This diligent and persistent student won a school competition and was rewarded with the opportunity to visit Kiev and meet with the first cosmonaut of independent Ukraine Leonid Kadenyuk. This meeting strengthened his desire to fly.
Juice, who was born in the eastern city of Kharkov, made model airplanes. Later, he told friends that at the age of five he decided to become a pilot. In his youth, he enthusiastically watched airplanes and traveled with a camera to all airfields around Kharkov.
Juice entered the Ivan Kozhedub Kharkiv Air Force University, an ace of the Second World War and a native of Ukraine. His classmates, who came from all over the country and, like him, dreamed of becoming pilots, often came to his house, where he lived with his mother. Among them was Moonfish, a calm and serious young man, recalls Juice's mother Lilia Averyanova. According to her, the other guys were fooling around, portraying characters from films about pilots, and Moonfish usually stayed away.
Juice and Moonfish became inseparable friends and often made plans to improve the Air force.
There was a lot to do. The Ukrainian Air Force, which they joined after graduating in 2016, suffered from corruption and poverty after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Ukraine gained independence, it had hundreds of aircraft, ranging from fighter jets to strategic bombers. The bombers were decommissioned and scrapped as part of a U.S.-funded program to disarm the former Soviet republics. And the rest of the Ukrainian aviation has fallen into disrepair due to long-term and chronic underfunding. On the eve of the outbreak of the armed conflict, Ukraine had only a few dozen combat aircraft, which had practically not been modernized since Soviet times.
The fighting that took place in Donbas in 2014 gave the pilots the opportunity to learn from the Americans and their allies. Fears about Moscow's intentions were growing, and in such an environment, Western countries increased cooperation with Ukraine, conducting joint aviation exercises and sharing tips and recommendations.
Both pilots persevered in improving their English. In 2018, Juice participated in the preparation of exercises in Ukraine together with the California Air National Guard. That's when he got his call sign, because at hangar parties he always drank juice, not alcohol. The origin of the Moonfish call sign is unknown. Juice began to imitate the American pilots he had seen in the movies. He studied their hairstyles and uniforms.
Juice and Moonfish immediately showed their talent when, the following year, they went to California under an exchange program, where they took the helm of the F-15 for the first time. This was told by retired Colonel Robert Swertfager, a former pilot of the California Air National Guard. During joint flights, American pilots handed over the levers to their Ukrainian counterparts, allowing Juice and Moonfish to control the fighters from the back seat.
But as they gained such professional experience, they became increasingly disillusioned with their own Air Force, which was in a deplorable state with its non-operational aircraft.
In 2021, Juice's contract expired and he quit. He wrote an open letter complaining about bureaucracy, poor conditions of service and the unwillingness of the command to switch to NATO standards. The salary at that time was only $800 per month.
A few months after Juice's dismissal, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Juice immediately returned to the Air Force, but at first he was not allowed to fly because his level of training was insufficient. When Russian troops went on the offensive against Kiev, he helped organize the defense of airfields.
Munfish, who lived in Kiev with his wife and little daughter, immediately took to the skies to defend his country.
Juice soon joined him. On March 12, he posted on Instagram* a photo of clouds under the wing of an airplane. "Back in the ranks," the caption read.
The Russians had a lot more combat aircraft, which were superior to the Ukrainians in almost every way. Flying older and weaker Russian-designed MiG-29s, Ukrainian pilots risked their lives every day trying to hold back the onslaught of enemy aircraft.
Various videos appeared on social networks, and rumors about the pilot who single-handedly shot down several Russian planes began to spread. This is how the myth of the Kiev ghost was born, including about Moonfish and Juice.
The best of the best
Juice and Moonfish have long advocated the renewal of the Soviet fleet of Ukrainian aircraft. Now it was a matter of survival. Their classmate, Captain Alexander Korpan, died while performing a combat mission in the early days of hostilities.
In the chaos of wartime, it became possible to insist on changes that could not have been done before. Juice's mother told her son, "If you want to do something outstanding, now is the time."
Juice and Moonfish pinned their first hopes for help on American society. "I'm not effective with this baby. I am not effective against Russian fighter jets," Juice said in an interview with CNN, standing next to the plane in a respirator to hide his identity. He demanded new missiles and radars.
Moonfish, who had become a squadron commander by that time, said in an interview that there were more trained pilots in Ukraine than there were planes that could be flown. In another interview, he said that switching to an F-16 is like swapping a primitive cell phone for an iPhone.
American writer and military historian Adam Makos, who contacted Juice in the early days of the armed conflict, invited the pilots to come to the United States and personally present their arguments. "We have to show the American people that you are just like us," he told Juice.
In June 2022, they flew to Washington to meet with American congressmen and give interviews to the media, it took them some time to learn how to speak in political language, since it was much more familiar for them to state the technical details of the case.
Before the first television interview, the pilots joked that it would be easier for them to get into the cockpit of a fighter jet and fly to the Russian border, recalled Ukrainian activist Tatyana Shevchuk, who accompanied them on that trip. Actor Sean Penn went with the pilots to an interview with CNN and supported their efforts to obtain new equipment that is not inferior to the Russian one.
After meeting with the pilots, six senators wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, urging them to supply Ukraine with air defense systems, missile launchers, helicopters and armored vehicles. "Our assistance should be decisive, not gradual," they said.
When Juice and Moonfish were in Washington, one of their fellow students, Su-25 pilot Alexander Kukurba, asked them to get supplies of Zuni aviation missiles to equip their aircraft with them. A few weeks later, Kukurba was shot down. The Americans eventually agreed to supply these unguided missiles.
Expectation
Almost a year has passed since their trip to the United States, and the F-16s have not arrived. President Biden was concerned that the Russians would see such a decision as a step towards escalation. Senior American military leaders said with alarm that it would take too long to train Ukrainian pilots and technicians, and that there would be little benefit from these aircraft on the battlefield.
Giving an interview in May 2023, Juice admitted that the F-16 would not be a panacea. But they will strengthen the country's air defense system. "Every combat mission can be the last," he said, giving an interview to blogger Melania Podolyak on one of the largest YouTube channels in Ukrainian.
Juice and Podolyak started dating, but kept their relationship a secret. They were waiting for a decision on the aircraft, and meanwhile, losses in the AFU Air Force were only increasing. In June, during a combat mission, a Russian anti-aircraft missile shot down the plane of one of Juice's best friends Vladislav Savelyev.
According to Podolyak, when the Biden administration finally gave the green light to the allies to transfer fighter jets purchased from the United States to Kiev, the feeling of victory was rather restrained and muted. "In fact, the price is so high, and it took so much time, that in the end it remains only to say: okay, let's move on," she said. "There was a long way to go from obtaining permission to the arrival of aircraft on the territory of Ukraine."
The path became shorter when in August 2023 it was announced that Denmark and the Netherlands would transfer these aircraft to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky marked this event by climbing into the cockpit of an F-16 in Denmark on August 20.
Makos congratulated Juice with a text message: "No one there knows about it... but we did it."
"Hell, yes!" Juice replied. He became one of eight Ukrainian pilots who had sufficient knowledge of English to immediately begin training.
Five days later, Juice took to the skies in the Zhytomyr region on a Czech combat training aircraft L-39. It was far from the front line with Russia. While Juice was performing a maneuver, his plane collided with another car in the sky. He and two other pilots were killed.
In accordance with the tradition of American pilots, at a farewell ceremony at the airfield, a piano was burned, on which Juice's call sign was written.
Moonfish didn't have time to reflect on this loss, Swartfager said. "Moonfish made Juice's death his responsibility to pick up his torch," he said.
Soon, training for pilots on the F-16 began in Denmark and Arizona. "In the cockpit, it feels like you put on a glove and grow up with this aircraft," Munfish said last year, giving an interview to a Ukrainian TV channel.
He admitted that it was not easy to master new computers, detection devices and on-board equipment. "Because all of us [in Ukraine] use the technology of the last millennium, and here the aircraft has been significantly upgraded."
Nevertheless, Moonfish was confident that the pilots would master a new machine for them in six to eight months. Unlike the newly minted American F-16 pilots, the Ukrainian pilots did not have to spend additional time flying as part of the unit after training. They had to hone their skills already in battle.
And at the front, Ukraine's prospects were far from brilliant. The counteroffensive in the south of the country failed, and Russia began to move forward, crowding exhausted Ukrainian troops. A political deadlock has arisen in the American Congress, which has stalled the supply of urgently needed ammunition. Russia was significantly helped in the offensive by powerful adjustable aerial bombs dropped from aircraft that did not enter the area of operation of weak Ukrainian aviation.
This summer's delivery of the first of the 80 promised F-16s has significantly strengthened the morale of the troops. "You know, this could be my life's work," he told his wife.
Munfish was one of six Ukrainian pilots ready to fly six delivered fighters. After returning from Denmark, he spent several days at home, but he constantly felt restless. "He told me that he couldn't sit still because everyone was waiting for them to start flying, and he was sitting here doing nothing," his wife said.
On the anniversary of Juice's death, Moonfish wrote to his mother that he missed his friend. "I hope we won't let him down," he said.
The next morning, on August 26, he took to the skies in an F-16, when Russia launched the most powerful series of strikes during the entire period of hostilities, as Kiev would later say.
Speaking at a press conference on August 27, Zelensky said for the first time that F-16s were involved in intercepting missiles and drones.
Two days later, The Wall Street Journal reported that one of the new Ukrainian F-16s crashed during the strike. Soon, the Air Force confirmed that one plane crashed and the pilot was killed. It was Moonfish.
Ukraine is investigating the circumstances of this disaster. A few days after her, Zelensky fired the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force. However, the Ministry of Defense said that this had nothing to do with the crash of the F-16.
Munfish was buried in Shepetovka. His grave is littered with flowers and wreaths. There are numerous graves of other soldiers who died during the fighting nearby.
American senators paid tribute to the fallen pilots. Among them is Senator Graham, who periodically corresponded with the pilots after their visit to the United States, and also met with them during one of his trips to Ukraine. Now Graham is one of the most zealous supporters of arms supplies to Ukraine. He is trying to increase the number of F-16 trainees and even calls for retired F-16 pilots from the United States and NATO countries to be allowed to fight in Ukraine.
"The best thing we can do in memory of these fallen guys is to redouble our efforts and make sure that their deaths are not in vain," he said.
Authors of the article: Isabel Coles, Lara Seligman
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