Russia accused of shooting down own planes in Ukraine

 The Telegraph:

Russian jets shot from the sky were “almost all” downed by Moscow’s own air defence systems, pro-Kremlin military bloggers have claimed.

A failure by Moscow’s forces in Ukraine to interact with other branches of the military led to a number of “friendly fire” incidents that brought down Su-30M, Su-34 and Su-35S fighter aircraft, as well as Ka-52 helicopters.

It was said that the Russian air force’s main enemy had become its own air defence systems.

The claims were made by authoritative pro-Russian military bloggers via their channels on the Telegram messaging app.

Rybar, a widely read but unofficial Russian propaganda account, reported: “Insufficient levels of interaction with other branches and types of troops, along with an inoperative identification system, has more than once led to ‘friendly fire’ to the point that almost all Su-34, Su-35S and Su-30M aircraft lost since spring, as well as part of the Ka-52 helicopters, are ‘on account’ of Russian air defence.”

FighterBomber, another authoritative Russian channel, added: “I’m also not happy with the fact that our valiant air defence is the worst and most dangerous enemy for all of our aviation. The fact that almost all of our planes were shot down by it is completely nonsense.”
...

A recent report by academics at the Royal United Services Institute found that friendly fire has been one of the biggest problems undermining Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Through a perceived lack of communication, Russian artillery was said to have targeted its own troops, while air defences engaged with friendly aircraft.

“Fratricide has been a widespread problem for the Russian forces during their invasion of Ukraine,” the report said.

It blamed the rigidity of Moscow’s top-down command structure for Russia’s repeated failings on the battlefield.

Russia's Ukraine war has exposed incompetence within the Russian military on a grand scale.   That tends to make the allegations of them shooting down their own aircraft credible.

See, also:

War in Ukraine: Convincing Putin he holds a losing hand

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