On August 29, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces acknowledged the loss of the F-16 fighter transferred to Ukraine; a special commission is investigating the causes of the crash. The Wall Street Journal previously wrote that the F-16 crashed due to pilot error. Ukrainian lawmaker Maryana Bezuglaya said that the F-16 had been shot down by the Patriot air defense system of the Ukrainian Armed Forces due to a failure in coordination between the units.
Two high-ranking US military officials said that friendly fire was probably not the cause of the F-16 crash, the newspaper said. The publication did not specify what this statement was based on, nor did it mention the versions of the destruction of the fighter put forward by these officials.
At the same time, the US military told the newspaper that US and Ukrainian investigators were considering many different possible reasons for the loss of the F-16 by Kiev.
An unnamed active pilot of the Ukrainian forces complained to the publication about problems in the Ukrainian Air Force, noting the entrenched bureaucracy and obsolescence of the structure.
According to the obituary of Ukrainian pilot Oleksiy Mes, he died on August 26 while performing a combat mission. At the same time, the coordinator of the pro-Russian underground, Sergey Lebedev, said on August 27 that the strike on the area of a military airfield in Starokonstantinov, Khmelnytsky region, had hit a facility where Ukrainian pilots had been stationed for training with foreign instructors. On August 30, Volodymyr Zelensky fired the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Air Force, Mykola Oleshchuk. The reasons for the resignation were not given, but on August 31, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov commented on the dismissal, calling it a "rotation" unrelated to the crash of the F-16 fighter.