Three Ukrainian military pilots, including one nicknamed “Juice” who campaigned in the US for the supply of F-16s, were killed on Friday when two combat training aircraft collided in an accident over a region west of Kyiv, Ukraine’s air force has said in an indication of the risks faced by its members.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in his nightly video address that the three men included Andriy Pilshchykov, “a Ukrainian officer, one of those who greatly helped our state”.
Investigators have begun to look into the causes of the accident, as the air force said there was no suggestion of Russian involvement. However, the incident underlines the risks to Ukrainian pilots who are often having to rely on old Soviet airframes that would not be in use were it not for the war.
Fluent in English, Pilshchykov was one of two pilots who went to Washington DC last summer to meet members of the US Cоngress and lobby for F-16 planes for Ukraine, and he appeared regularly in US media to further the country’s case.
The extended lobbying effort finally succeeded earlier this month when Denmark and the Netherlands said they would supply the jets. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force said it was confident Ukraine would eventually end up with 120 F-16s, with the first likely to be flying over the country’s skies early next year.
However, the accident robbed Pilshchykov of the chance. “You can’t even imagine how much he wanted to fly an F-16,” the air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat wrote online. “But now that American planes are actually on the horizon, he will not fly them.”
Pilshchykov’s call sign, “Juice”, was given to him by US pilots during a joint training exercise because he would not drink alcohol. Inhat told the Guardian Pilshchykov also regularly flew combat missions, intercepting cruise missiles and drones, as well as seeking to introduce reforms to Ukraine’s air force.
Inhat said: “He was also trying to bring Nato standards into Ukraine … and even western traditions, such as the burning of pianos to honour a fallen pilot.” On Saturday night, an upright piano was set alight on what appeared to be a remote runway to mark the deaths of the three men.
The other dead pilots were named by the air force as Maj Vyacheslav Minka and Maj Sergey Prokazin. “We express our condolences to the families of the victims. This is a painful and irreparable loss for all of us,” the air force said.
Kyiv has received promises for a potential total of more than 60 F-16s from Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, and Inhat said Ukraine “would need around 120 fighter jets to make a difference” on the battlefield. “We have no doubt we will get to that amount,” he said.
Until now, Ukraine’s small air force has been relying on ageing Soviet-era fighter jets such as the MiG-29, which Pilshchykov flew. Pilots have to fly metres from the ground to evade enemy radar, with Kyiv unable to afford significant losses as the war continues.
Pilot and crew training for the F-16 jets is under way, and Pilshchykov told CNN a couple of months ago that Ukrainian pilots were already trying to master the basics of F-16 flying in advance, using improvised flight simulators and whatever unclassified manuals they could find.
