UPDATE 1-Russian jet shoots down Ukrainian warplane over Ukraine – Kyiv …
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KYIV, July 17 (Reuters) – A Russian jet shot down a
Ukrainian SU-25 fighter plane that was on military operations
over the east of Ukraine, where government forces are fighting
to quell a pro-Russian separatist rebellion, a Ukrainian
military spokesman said on Thursday.
It was the strongest Ukrainian allegation to date of direct
Russian military involvement in the conflict. Russia’s defence
ministry declined to comment on the report.
The plane was brought down on Wednesday night by a rocket
strike and the pilot safely ejected, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman
for Ukraine’s national Defence and Security Council, told
journalists.
It was the third reported incident this week in which a
Ukrainian plane has been hit by a missile.
Kyiv has said that an An-26 military transporter was brought
down last Monday probably by a missile fired from Russia, either
from the air or from the ground. Two out of the eight people on
board that plane were killed, the Ukrainian military said.
On Wednesday, another SU-25 was hit by a rebel missile but
the pilot brought the plane down successfully with relatively
slight damage. Kyiv did not allege Russian involvement in that
case.
The incidents come against a background of increasingly
strident charges by Kyiv of direct Russian involvement in the
three and a half month conflict.
Moscow denies orchestrating the rebellion, but Western
governments accuse it of failing to do enough to help curb the
violence. U.S. President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on
Wednesday on some of Russia’s biggest companies, limiting their
access to funding.
After a day’s pause, Ukrainian warplanes on Wednesday
resumed overflights in the east where they have been striking at
concentrations of rebels and military equipment which Kyiv says
is being brought in from Russia to fortify rebel positions.
Lysenko said five more Ukrainian servicemen had been killed
in the past 24 hours, which would bring to more than 270 the
number killed since the government launched an “anti-terrorist”
operation in April to crush the rebels.
Hundreds of civilians and rebels have also been killed.
(Additional reporting by Natalya Zinets in Kyiv and Tatyana
Ustinova in Moscow; Writing by Richard Balmforth, editing by
Mark Trevelyan)