File image.
The Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) has acknowledged losing another Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jet, saying in a statement that the pilot was killed.
“On the night of August 23, 2025, after completing a combat mission during an approach to landing, the pilot of the MiG-29 fighter aircraft, Major Serhii Bondar, born in 1979, was killed,” the UAF’s statement, published on Telegram, reads.
The air force added that a special commission has been tasked with investigating the cause of the crash, without revealing where the incident took place.
Before the start of the Russian special military operation, some 40 MiG-29A, MiG-29S, MiG-29MU1 and MiG-29MU2 were in service with the UAF. A year into the operation, Ukraine received at least 27 MiG-29G and MiG-29AS from Poland and Slovakia.
Wikipedia’s list of aviation shootdowns and accidents during the conflict says that the UAF had lost at least 51 MiG-29, including three described as “damaged”. The real losses are likely even higher.
The UAF nearly always blames its losses on crashes. However, it has been proven in many cases that the losses were in fact caused by Russian fighter jets, air defenses or missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian air bases and maintenance facilities.
In some cases, Ukrainian fighter jets, including more than one MiG-29, were lost while attempting to intercept Russian drones. Some observers have already speculated that the latest loss was caused by a botched drone interception.
Despite recently receiving American-made F-16 and French-made Mirage 2000 fighter jets from NATO, the UAF appears to be struggling to keep conducting operations. To this day, the air force remains mainly reliant on what is left of its Soviet-made warplanes.
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ukraine’s airworthy mig and sukhoi fleet is down to about a dozen. soon the ukraine air force will be mostly composed of crop dusters and other propeller driven aircraft, and a few f16’s and mirage 2000 that pse a logistical nightmare for ukrainian maintenance crews. the russian air force will soon hve complete air supremacy before winter.
french rafale “shot down” us f35 during military exercise in finland. so much about the best fighterjet in the world…
old soviet tech are better than capitalistic ones! what a surprise! lmao!
the fact that ukraine still has airworthy soviet migs-29 is a proof of th soviet military superiority in it´s time… one of hundreds of proofs… russia should rely on soviet expertise again if want to be anything in the future… the foolish cult of western “wunderwaffe” were broken by soviet weapons/designs used by russia… russia should stop lustration, a pole doing it, it´s normal… poles aren´t real slavs… a russian? doing lustration? it´s a shame!
these planes were designed to take off from and land on airfields, i.e. no need for runways; they have diverters to pull air from the top of the intake rather than the front during takeoff and landing and extremely strong landing gear. american planes not only need a paved runway but need a “fod walk” (foreign object damage) to manually clear all debris larger than a pea off the surface.
ukraine is going to lose every last bird