According to a popular Telegram channel reported to be run by a former Russian military aviator, a Russian Aerospace Force’s Sukhoi Su-34 (NATO reporting name Fullback) fighter-bomber aircraft was shot down on Saturday over Ukraine.
The Fighterbomber channel shared an apparent tribute to the downed Su-34 with a black and white photo of the multirole aircraft and the caption “The earth is the sky, brothers.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense has made no official statement about the alleged loss of the Su-34 on Saturday, nor has Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense commented. However, other pro-Moscow Telegram channels have provided additional details, claiming the aircraft was shot down approximately 50 km (30 miles) from the front lines, and that it was a U.S.-made F-16 Fighting Falcon that downed the Russian fighter-bomber.
The Russian pilot did not survive, the milbloggers added.
F-16 Fighting Falcon Beared Its Claws
NATO members Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway had all pledged earlier this year to provide upwards of 90 F-16s after President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the U.S.-made multirole combat aircraft.
The first dozen aircraft arrived in Ukraine in August. Though the Fighting Falcons have already been employed in countering a Russian missile and drone strikes, if confirmed this would mark the first time the American-made aircraft has scored an aerial victory against a manned fighter.
The Sukhoi Su-34 multirole strike aircraft is a twin-engine, twin-seat, all-weather supersonic medium-range fighter-bomber, initially developed for the Soviet Air Forces in the 1980s. It was one of the Kremlin’s many programs that were forced on the backburner following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis that followed.
The program was later revived and the Su-34 formally entered service in 2014. It has been considered one of the Kremlin’s most capable warbirds, and the loss would be significant as Moscow struggles to keep up production of new aircraft.
News Coming From An Unlikely Source
Russia’s “milbloggers” who regularly post to the social messaging app Telegram about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine have surprisingly been upfront about the Kremlin’s setbacks in its so-called “special military operation,” while they’ve even been critical about the handling of the war.
This was certainly the case on Saturday morning as the Telegram channel VDV for Honesty and Justice warned, “Soon there will be more such losses. NATO has sent F-16s out to hunt,” and added, “As a result, our infantry losses will increase.”
Notably, however, the bloggers haven’t criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, but as in past setbacks for the Russian military, the anger is directed at those overseeing the conduct of the war directly.
“The first open descent from the Kremlin’s military policies came from military bloggers, and they have found a space within Russia’s public discourse to be able to critique the military but not Putin,” said Dr. Matthew Schmidt, professor of national security at the University of New Haven. “They critique the military and claim it is essentially incompetent but we’re pro-war and pro-Putin and he needs to fix the incompetence of the military.”
If the downing of the Su-34 proves true, the milbloggers will likely continue to be quite vocal about the situation in Ukraine.
“This is a classic episode of where they are, and the bloggers are claiming that it reflects the incompetence of the generals and that Putin needs to fire them and find new ones,” added Schmidt.
News from the front continues to circulated faster on Telegram than the Kremlin can officially comment, or in this case, put its spin on the story.
“Smartphones and social media give everyone a megaphone with which they can instantly reach billions of people,” said social media and technology analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. “This is particularly a problem for totalitarian regimes when they rely so much on lies and twisting the truth.”
