Ukraine Probes Incident that Killed 3 Pilots, Russia Attacks with Cruise Missiles

This handout photograph released by the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on August 26, 2023, shows wreckage of planes in the Zhytomyr region. (Photo by Handout / Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine / AFP)
This handout photograph released by the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on August 26, 2023, shows wreckage of planes in the Zhytomyr region. (Photo by Handout / Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine / AFP)
TT

Ukraine Probes Incident that Killed 3 Pilots, Russia Attacks with Cruise Missiles

This handout photograph released by the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on August 26, 2023, shows wreckage of planes in the Zhytomyr region. (Photo by Handout / Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine / AFP)
This handout photograph released by the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on August 26, 2023, shows wreckage of planes in the Zhytomyr region. (Photo by Handout / Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine / AFP)

Ukrainian authorities have launched an investigation after a midair collision between two warplanes in the west of the country killed three pilots.

Ukraine's air force spokesman Yuri Ihnat told Ukrainian television on Sunday it wasn't immediately clear how long the probe would take.

According to the air force's Telegram page, two L-39 training military aircraft collided on Friday during a combat mission over Ukraine's western Zhytomyr region. Three pilots were killed, including Andriy Pilshchykov, a well-known pilot with the nickname “Juice” who was an outspoken advocate for Ukraine getting F-16 fighter jets.

President Volodymyr Zelensky in his nightly address on Saturday paid tribute to Pilshchykov, describing him as a “Ukrainian officer, one of those who helped our country a lot.”

Ukraine's Vasilkiv tactical aviation brigade on Sunday identified the other two pilots killed in the collision as Viacheslav Minka and Serhiy Prokazin.

Russian forces, in the meantime, targeted central and northern regions of Ukraine with cruise missiles overnight. Ukraine's air force on Sunday reported air defenses successfully intercepted four of them. In the Kyiv region surrounding the Ukrainian capital, the falling debris damaged a dozen private homes and wounded two people, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said.

In Russia, the Defense Ministry reported bringing down two drones over the Bryansk and Kursk regions that border Ukraine. The drones, the ministry said, were launched by “the Kyiv regime” in “yet another attempt at terrorist attacks” on Russian soil.

Kursk Gov. Roman Starovoit, however, reported that a drone slammed into a multistory residential building in the region's namesake capital. It wasn't immediately clear if it crashed after being shot down by air defenses, like the Defense Ministry reported, or was targeting the building. Starovoit said no one was hurt, but a number of windows were shattered.



Russia Says it Detained Suspect over Murder of Top General in Moscow

Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)
Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)
TT

Russia Says it Detained Suspect over Murder of Top General in Moscow

Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)
Investigators stand at the site where Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Russia said on Wednesday it had detained a citizen of Uzbekistan who had confessed to planting and detonating a bomb which killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov in Moscow a day earlier on the instructions of Ukraine's security service.
Kirillov, who was chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed outside his apartment building along with his assistant when a bomb hidden in an electric scooter went off.
He was the most senior Russian military officer to be assassinated inside Russia by Ukraine. Ukraine's SBU intelligence service, which accused Kirillov of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops, something Moscow denies, took responsibility for the killing.
Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said in a statement on Wednesday that the unnamed suspect had told them he had come to Moscow to carry out an assignment for Ukraine's intelligence services.
In a video of the confession published by the Baza news outlet, which is known to have sources in Russian law enforcement circles, the suspect is seen sitting in a van describing his actions.
It was not clear what conditions he was speaking in and Reuters could not immediately verify the video's authenticity.
Dressed in a winter coat, the suspect is shown saying he had come to Moscow at the orders of Ukraine's intelligence services, bought an electric scooter, and then received an improvised explosive device to carry out the hit months later.
He describes how he had placed the device on the electric scooter which he had parked outside the entrance of the apartment block where Kirillov lived.
Investigators cited him as saying that he had set up a surveillance camera in a hire car nearby and that the organizers of the assassination, who he was cited as saying had been based in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, had used the camera to watch what was going on.
In the video, the suspect, who was born in 1995, is shown saying that he had remotely detonated the device once Kirillov had left the building.
He says Ukraine had offered him $100,000 for his role in the murder and residency in a European country.
Investigators said they were identifying other people involved in the hit and the daily Kommersant newspaper reported that one other suspect had been detained. Reuters could not independently confirm that.