One of Ukraine‘s most celebrated and adorned fighter pilots, recognized by his call-sign “Juice,” was amongst these killed over the weekend in an obvious coaching accident, the Ukrainian Air Force revealed Sunday.

During a fight mission roughly 90 miles outdoors of Kyiv, two L-39 fight coach plane on Friday collided whereas within the sky, ensuing within the deaths of three pilots, together with Andriy Pilshchykov, the ace referred to as Juice.

The Ukrainian Air Force known as the casualties a “painful and irreparable loss for all of us,” and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a press release expressing unhappiness on the information.

Mr. Pilshchykov was a member of the “Ghost of Kyiv” fighter pilot unit defending Ukraine’s skies from Russia’s invading forces and waged a fierce lobbying marketing campaign to steer the Biden administration to offer F-16 fighter jets for Kyiv’s protection.

The information broke simply as Russian officers lastly confirmed Sunday that Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and different high officers of the highly effective and feared mercenary power had been aboard the doomed personal airplane that crashed below mysterious circumstances 5 days earlier than.

The Tass information service reported that the Russian Investigative Committee had completed its genetic and forensic identification of the seven passengers and three crew members of the Embraer personal jet, and that the 62-year-old Mr. Prigozhin, a onetime confidant of President Vladimir Putin who staged an abortive mutiny in June, was certainly among the many victims.

“The identities of all 10 victims have been established,” the investigative staff mentioned in a press release. “They correspond to the list stated in the flight manifest.”

Also confirmed as lifeless from the passenger listing had been Dmitry Utkin, the commando who first organized the Wagner Group and recruited Mr. Prigozhin to its ranks, and Valery Chekalov, thought-about the power’s logistics specialist.

In an interview with The Washington Times final 12 months throughout a visit to Washington to satisfy with U.S. officers and promote expedited navy help, the Ukrainian fighter pilot acknowledged the lengthy odds he confronted every time he undertook Russia’s highly effective air forces.  

“It’s almost a one-way ticket to fight [Russian] fighters,” Juice defined in April 2022. “It’s very difficult. We are ready to die in the fight. We don’t want to die. But if we have to, we want to be effective before we die.”

Adam Makos, a founding father of the U.S. charity Wingmen for Ukraine who helped coordinate the pilot’s visits with American officers and lawmakers, instructed The Times Juice was so devoted to defending fellow pilots and lobbying on their behalf that he would use his personal financial savings to purchase Ukrainian helicopter crews security tools that they desperately wanted.

“Now, a year later, we finally see the fruits of Juice’s trip to America. Biden has done a U-turn and Ukrainian pilots are now training on F-16s,” Mr. Makos mentioned.

Juice’s accident got here simply days earlier than he was set to start coaching on the F-16s he’d fought so arduous for.

“My last message to him was to send him a picture of President Zelenskiy taking a seat in an F-16 recently,” Mr. Makos mentioned. “ … He made it happen. We made it happen. And he could be proud of that. His reply would be the last words I’d ever hear from him: ‘Hell yeah!’”

Russia has dominated the skies since declaring struggle, main Mr. Zelenskyy to plead for fighter jets from America and Western allies.

President Biden finally relented, saying final week that the U.S. would be part of Denmark and the Netherlands in offering F-16s and the sophisticated coaching required. Ukraine has usually been compelled to depend on outdated Soviet-era jets.

Wanting to hide his id, Juice’s trademark was to don a material masks throughout media appearances. His name signal was given to him by U.S. pilots throughout a joint coaching train as a result of he declined to drink alcohol.

“It’s devastating to see him killed when he was likely so close to being able to train in the F-16, which he advocated so successfully for and in which he would likely have absolutely thrived as a pilot,” mentioned Wingmen for Ukraine spokesman Drew Armey, a reservist for the U.S. Air Force who has labored with the Ukrainian Air Force since 2015.

The different two Ukrainian pilots killed within the collision had been Maj. Vyacheslav Minka and Maj. Sergey Prokazin, Ukrainian officers mentioned.

With rumors and hypothesis about Mr. Prigozhin‘s destiny flying across the globe, the Russian assertion provided no perception into why the airplane immediately went down in clear climate Wednesday whereas flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

The Tass report mentioned {that a} legal investigation has been launched wanting into “potential violations of flight safety rules.”

In addition to constructing a broad-ranging enterprise empire with deep hyperlinks to Mr. Putin‘s Kremlin, Mr. Prigozhin molded the Wagner Group right into a formidable personal military, with vital deployments in such sizzling spots as sub-Saharan Africa, Syria and Ukraine.

Mr. Putin has provided solely muted feedback on the crash and Mr. Prigozhin‘s legacy, and the way forward for Wagner Group operations stays deeply unsure. An early U.S. intelligence evaluation has reportedly concluded that an intentional explosion — probably a bomb planted aboard — induced the airplane to go down, however the Kremlin has angrily denied that Mr. Putin or the federal government had any position within the crash.

Mr. Prigozhin had feuded bitterly and publicly in latest months with high Russian protection officers over the conduct of the troubled invasion of Ukraine, the place Wagner Group forces had been taking a lead half in among the deadliest battles within the 18-month struggle.

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