Kyiv air defences shoot down three enemy fighter bombers

UKRAINE shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter bombers over the southern front yesterday morning, Kyiv said.

Russian Telegram accounts said the aircraft were destroyed by Patriot missiles near the Kherson bridgehead over the river Dnipro.

Oleksii Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s security council, said they had been “hunting” the jets for a “long time” because they “created danger for our soldiers”.

The Su-34, one of Russia’s most advanced aircraft, carries a payload of 12 tons of bombs and missiles and can strike targets up to 600 miles away.

They are reported to cost between £28million ($36million) and £39million ($50million).

Lt Gen Mykola Oleshchuk, the Ukrainian air force commander, wrote on Telegram: “Today at noon on the southern front, three Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers were downed! Eternal flight, ‘brothers’!”

Ukraine’s military says Russia has lost 324 warplanes and helicopters since it invaded the country.

Russia is thought to have had around 150 Su-34s before it invaded. Ukraine said it had shot down more than 20 of them before yesterday’s losses.

Russian Telegram channels published photographs suggesting that at least one pilot managed to eject successfully but his condition is unknown.

Ukraine also shot down 24 of 28 Shahed drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that the hit 24th, 25th and 26th storeys of a Kyiv apartment building, injuring two people, and an infrastructure facility and grain warehouse in southern regions, officials said.

In the south, Russia again tried to damage port infrastructure – a frequent target since it pulled out of a UNbrokered deal that allowed safe passage of Ukraine’s grain shipments via the Black Sea.