According to Ukraine, it downed two Russian command aircraft, dealing a severe blow to Putin’s air force.

According to Ukraine, it downed two Russian command aircraft, dealing a severe blow to Putin’s air force.

Yuriy Ignat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian air force, told TFD News that “Russia only has a few of such powerful machines.” “You can only image the immense sorrow it brings them.”

According to Kyiv’s military leader on Monday, Ukraine shot down a Russian spy plane and airborne command center, dealing a serious blow to the troops of the Kremlin.

“We appreciate the Air Force’s superbly organized and carried out operation in the Azov region!” Zaluzhnyi remarked in a post on the Telegram chat service.

He did not say how precisely the planes were shot down or how much damage was done. The planes were shot down over the northern Azov Sea, which separates the two countries, according to an interactive map he posted.

His comment was followed by one from Ukraine’s air force in a post on X, with a caption that read “Who did this?” in English and a hush emoji, a reflection of the winking way in which Ukraine often celebrates military wins.

NBC News could not independently verify if the planes were shot down and under what circumstances.

But if the claims are true, shooting down the two planes would mark one of Ukraine’s biggest successes against Russia’s superior air power since the beginning of the war. It could also deal a blow to the Kremlin’s military operations in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s counteroffensive has failed to achieve clear progress on the battlefield.

Those struggles and an escalation of Russian air attacks on cities across Ukraine have dampened morale, as has a growing reluctance among Ukraine’s Western partners to commit to continue funding its fight.

Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat told NBC News that the loss of the A-50 was particularly significant for Russia given its powerful radar that can see for hundreds of miles.

“Russia only has a few of such powerful machines,” he added. “You can imagine what a great loss it is for them.”

He later said in a post on Facebook that the IL-22 plane may have made it back to land and was not fully destroyed, but added that the A-50 aircraft was the “priority target,” and that downing a plane like that had seemed like “an overwhelming task” for Ukraine’s air force until Monday.

The A-50 early warning and guidance aircraft is used to detect and identify airborne objects and track their location and movement, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. It described one of the IL-22 plane’s models, the IL-22M-11, as “a mobile air command post” crucial for battlefield communication. It was not clear if it was the same model of IL-22 that Ukraine claims to have shot down.

He did not say how precisely the planes were shot down or how much damage was done. The planes were shot down over the northern Azov Sea, which separates the two countries, according to an interactive map he posted.

Russia lost an IL-22 plane and its crew during the short-lived mutiny by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin last summer, Russian authorities and state media reported.

There was no immediate reaction from the Russian Defense Ministry, which did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment about the planes Monday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in his daily briefing that Moscow had no information that any Russian planes were shot down by Ukrainian forces.

Military analysts warned that it was too early to judge the significance of the incident as it remains unclear exactly how the planes were shot down and whether they were a total loss.

“We need to be careful about how much importance we attach to this,” said Christopher Tuck, an expert in conflict and security at King’s College London. “We still don’t know how they were damaged or lost: whether, for example, they were hit because of new tactics and/or capabilities employed by Ukrainian forces, whether the Russians were careless, or a combination of the two.”

The loss of the aircraft themselves would be a blow to the Russians, but not in any way decisive, he said. It adds to the existing command, control and communications problems experienced by Russian forces, he said, but the two aircraft are not in themselves pivotal.

It would be more significant, however, if the planes were lost because of new Ukrainian capabilities or tactics, Tuck added, such as pushing its Western-donated Patriot air defense systems forward.

“These are vital to ground-based air defense coordination and command and control of Russian air operations, even though they are only operational in small numbers,” stated Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the British military think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), who specializes in airpower and technology. “After the prolonged intensity of combat operations against Ukraine over the past 23 months, Russia has major training pipeline challenges, so replacing any lost mission crews would likely be almost as problematic as replacing the aircraft themselves,” he continued.

Frank Ledwidge, a senior lecturer in war studies at the University of Portsmouth in England and a former British military intelligence officer, said that regardless of how the planes were lost, if Ukraine’s accusations are accurate, it would be a “very embarrassing” episode for the Kremlin.

It is not appropriate to kill these creatures in that kind of setting. They really oughtn’t to,” he remarked.