Two Ukraine jet fighters shot down

Fox News:

Two Ukrainian military fighter jets were reportedly shot down over the nation’s contested eastern region on Wednesday, even as U.S. and Ukrainian sources said Russian weaponry has been pouring in to separatists following the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane last week.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said two Sukhoi-25 fighters were shot down Wednesday afternoon over an area called Savur Mogila. The planes may have been carrying up to two crew members each, according to Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksiy Dmitrashkovsky.

The pilots ejected from the planes but it is not known if they survived, Fox News confirms. A search party is out looking for them.

Reuters reported that Kiev blamed the latest incident on pro-Russian separatists, who are suspected of downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last Thursday, killing all 298 aboard. Although Russia has denied supplying the ethnic Russian separatists with sophisticated Buk surface-to-air missile batteries, the kind suspected of bringing down MH-17, Ukrainian defense officials say heavy weaponry is flowing into the Donetsk region that the separatists now control.

More than a dozen Russian-made multiple launch rocket systems crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border on Tuesday, according to Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman for the information center of the National Security and Defense Council. Those weapons are artillery, and built for shelling land-based targets.

The spokesman said that Russia in recent days had started supplying more sophisticated weapons to militants in eastern Ukraine, in particular, modified Grad systems.

The Grad is a mobile battery mounted on truck fitted with a bank of 40 launch tubes that can be turned away from the unprotected cab. The number of rockets that each vehicle is able to quickly bring to bear on an enemy target makes it effective, especially at shorter ranges. The system has lower precision than classical artillery and cannot be used in situations that call for pinpoint precision.
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This appears to be more evidence of Russian complicity in the shootdown of the passenger jet.  There is obviously a lack of contrition about their screw up.   There must also be a sense that the separatist forces are losing and need reinforcements.