Ukraine Says Russian Plane Shot Down Its Fighter Jet
|
Version 0 of 1. MOSCOW — The Ukrainian government said on Thursday that a Russian military plane had shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet in Ukrainian airspace the previous evening, a serious allegation of direct intervention by Russia’s armed forces. If confirmed, the confrontation would represent the first open and direct involvement by Russia’s military in eastern Ukraine since the separatist rebellion began there in April. There was no immediate confirmation or denial by Russian officials. Vladislav Brig, a spokesman for one of the separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, said in a telephone interview that rebel fighters had shot rockets at two or three Ukrainian fighter jets on Wednesday evening. Mr. Brig said the rockets were fired from the ground. The Ukrainian government alleged a more dramatic midair confrontation, involving Russia. “Military aircraft of the Russian Federation carried out a rocket attack on a Su-25 plane of the armed forces of Ukraine, which was on a mission in Ukraine,” Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Thursday at a news briefing in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. “Our plane was shot down.” Though there is a growing body of evidence that Russia has provided tanks, weapons and other support to the separatist rebels, and several leaders of the insurrection have identified themselves as Russian citizens, there has been no proof of active engagement in Ukraine by the regular Russian military. The Ukrainian government, however, has complained on several occasions of violations of its airspace by Russian aircraft. Mr. Lysenko said the pilot of the Su-25 fighter had ejected from the aircraft and parachuted safely to the ground, and had been removed to safety by Ukrainian ground forces. “The pilot had no injuries,” he said. Although President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has called repeatedly in recent weeks for a renewal of peace negotiations that would directly involve separatist leaders, the United States has said Russia has stepped up its military support for the rebels. On Wednesday, President Obama announced additional economic sanctions to penalize Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis. “Even in the face of all this diplomacy that’s been going on and very high-level efforts by us and by key members of the European Union, notably France, Germany, the U.K., in fact, over the past month, the flow of heavy weapons and support for separatists from Russia has actually increased,” a senior Obama administration official said on Wednesday, during a briefing for reporters about the new sanctions. “You will have seen on social media over the last week convoys of Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry combat vehicles, Grad rocket launchers, Howitzers, self-propelled mortars flowing into Ukraine,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under the ground rules that the White House has imposed for such briefings. Ukraine and Russia have traded several accusations of cross-border hostilities in recent days. The Russian Foreign Ministry, for instance, warned of potentially “irreversible consequences” after a man was killed in the Russian city of Donetsk, which shares the same name as the regional capital in eastern Ukraine where rebel forces have been regrouping in recent days. The Russians said the man was killed by a mortar shell fired from the Ukrainian side of the border. Ukraine, in turn, has accused Russia of firing a rocket that destroyed an Antonov-26 military transport plane on Monday, and Ukraine also accused Russian military planes of carrying out an airstrike that destroyed a residential building and killed 11 people in the town of Snizhne on Tuesday morning. The American official who briefed reporters on the new sanctions said the Ukrainian transport plane had been flying at an altitude of 21,000 feet. “Only very sophisticated weapons systems would be able to reach this height,” the official said. In explaining the sanctions, American officials also noted that three of the top leaders of the separatist movement — Alexander Borodai, the prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic; Igor Strelkov, the republic’s defense minister; and Pavel Gubarev, its governor — are Russian citizens. |