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.
“I believe that in four to six months we can learn to fly it. It’s realistic,” Juice told CNN. “Our transition training will be pretty freakin’ easy.”
On Sunday, Inhat said Ukraine hoped to have F-16s in service in a few months, probably early next year. “Somebody wrote that we might have to wait until summer, but that shows a certain pessimism,” he added, in a clear indication the air force expected to have the planes flying before then.
Radio Svoboda shared video of the remains of blackened, mangled aircraft being removed from a field far from the frontlines, at the village of Sinhury, about 10km (six miles) south of Zhytomyr and about 150km (90 miles) west of Kyiv.
In the video, a man said he heard an explosion in the air above the school building and then two planes fell in smoke and flames. A woman described seeing two planes flying at a distance from one another, then coming closer and closer to each other before the crash.
The military analyst and former pilot Roman Svitan, in an interview posted by the online outlet Espreso TV, said the crash of the two L-39 training planes was “most likely” related to formation flying. He said the standard distance between aircraft was 50-70 metres but that sometimes planes flew practically on top of each other at a distance of 3-4 metres.
He said the L-39 was at once a fighter, an attack aircraft, a bomber and a training plane, but that in formation flying, especially at low altitudes, “there’s no time for ejection”.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office announced that a criminal investigation had been opened into whether flight preparation rules had been violated. Zelenskiy said: “It is too early to discuss details. Certainly, all circumstances will be clarified.”
The L-39 – also known as the Albatross though never given an official Nato name – is a Czech-made single-engined trainer and light fighter that is cited as the most widely used aircraft of its kind in the world.
