The Ukrainian Air Force announced on Friday evening that it had shot down a Russian A-50 spy plane over the Sea of Azov, and published a map that appeared to show that the plane had crashed in southern Russia.
Mykola Oleshchuk, commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, said that the army destroyed a Russian A-50 surveillance plane on Friday, in the second incident of its kind in about a month in which Kiev announced the downing of an aircraft of this advanced model.
Oleshchuk said in a post on Telegram, “(The) A-50 with the call sign (Bayan) flew for the last time!”
The A-50 is a model of Russian spy planes equivalent to the AWACS (early warning and control system) aircraft used by NATO.
The Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted military sources as saying that the plane was shot down over Russian territory between the cities of Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar.
The agency reported that the operation was carried out by the Air Force and the Intelligence Department.
Russian news agencies quoted emergency services in the southern Krasnodar region as saying that fragments of an aircraft were found in a swampy area and that firefighters put out a fire. The report did not mention an A-50 aircraft.
The Ukrainian military announced in January that the Air Force had destroyed a Russian Beriev A-50 surveillance plane and an airborne command center aboard an Ilyushin Il-22 aircraft in the Sea of Azov.
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