The Ukrainian Air Force is seeing increased success in eliminating Russian aircraft and missiles, thereby opening up more opportunities for offensive air and ground operations.
Ukrainian units are effectively using Western aircraft (e.g., F-16 and Mirage fighter jets) and various missile and bomb kits (e.g., AASM Hammer guided bombs) to take out Russian fighters and troop positions.
Gaining air superiority is a critical condition for future operations to liberate Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories. Doing so depends on the political will and decisiveness of Ukraine’s Western partners to continue supplying weapons.
On June 18, the Ukrainian Air Force conducted an air strike on the personnel assembly point of the Russian Armed Forces in the village of Kozynka in Belgorod oblast. A Ukrainian MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jet launched two French-made AASM Hammer guided bombs,
destroying the building where a concentration of Russian troops had taken shelter (Militarnyi, June 18). The strike was another example of Ukrainian pilots effectively obliterating targets in Russian territory as part of a concerted effort to increasingly bring the war home to Russia and put more pressure on the Kremlin (see EDM, August 13, November 13, 2024, February 24, June 9, 27).
In May, Ukrainian forces carried out another air strike in the same region, eliminating a border guard unit of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) (Militarnyi, May 27). A video of the operation, recorded via reconnaissance drone,
was posted on the “Sunflower” Telegram channel associated with the Ukrainian Air Force (Telegram/Soniah_hub, May 26). This high-precision strike, too, was made possible by the modular AASM Hammer bomb modernization kit. Meanwhile,
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